"Pray don't imagine that I'm offering to give you these things; I've expressed myself ill if I've conveyed that impression. An exact account of their cost will be rendered to you, for which I shall receive payment in due course."
"From whom will you receive payment?--from me? How can you imagine that I shall be able to pay you; when, as I tell you, I haven't a penny; and don't suppose I ever shall have one."
"As a man, Miss Gilbert, you must allow me to understand commercial matters better than you do--as a business man I know I shall be paid, in full; so please make your mind easy on that score. When you have changed your clothes--and I think that, considering all things, the sooner you do change them the better--and I have stuck my steed between the shafts, I will drive you, at the rate of about four miles an hour, to a railway station; then, with your permission, acting as your personal conductor, I will take you, with the help of a train, to Mrs Vernon's house. Mrs Vernon is Frances Vernon's mother; and is by way of being some sort of a kind of a relation of my own. She will be delighted to give you house room, until inquiries have been made into the truth of Mr Emmett's statements, as to your father being dead and his having left no money--I feel sure he did leave money, or Emmett would never have paid that bill at the convent; to say nothing of his having expressed a wish to marry you--and in short, till your affairs are placed upon a regular footing."
"Which may be never. Why should Mrs Vernon give me what you call house room?"
"You are full of whys. I tell you that she will be delighted--for your sake; for her own sake; for Frances' sake; and, perhaps, a little for mine."
"For your sake!--it's perfectly ridiculous to suppose that you can care either one way or the other."
"Quite so; it's very good of you to say so."
"Mr Frazer, are you deceiving me? Are you sure that you know Frances Vernon--and her mother?"
"Extraordinary though it may seem, facts are facts; and I not only know Frances Vernon and her mother, but also her father and her brother."
"That's Jim."