"That dress cost every penny of five-and-twenty or thirty pounds, and I dare say the hat cost another tenner; and she's been walking about in those kind of things her whole life long, I'm sure of it."
"I told you, sir, she was a lady born and bred."
"Mr. Gibb, you see advertisements for a lady, as barmaid; when I think of that I don't want to think of Miss Lindsay as a lady; she's on a different plane; she's of heaven, not of earth."
"I told you, sir, she was high as the heavens above me."
"So she is; you were right there; although the construction of your sentence is faulty, Mr. Gibb. She's a divinity among women; a poem among girls; the ideal which a man sets up for himself of what a woman may be when God chooses."
"Is she, sir?"
"Look at her! how she walks, how she moves, how she bears herself! And what a voice! had Orpheus had it he'd have needed no warbling string to aid him to draw 'iron tears down Pluto's cheek!' Then what beauty's in her face; but there's in it what not one beautiful woman in a thousand has, there's a soul! Mr. Gibb, I've only seen Miss Lindsay about twenty minutes, but I regard her as 'a perfect woman, nobly planned'; and I may add 'she was a phantom of delight, when first she gleamed upon my sight,' therefore I say you were guilty of conspiracy in luring me on to ask her to come here; because what has the result been?"
"What has it, sir?"
"The result has been that I've made an idiot of myself; a complete and perfect ass."
"Have you, sir?"