"Am I managing this or are you, Richmond? I'm a man of the world."
"If I married a woman I did not care for because she was rich, you would say I had dishonoured myself. The discredit would not be in her wealth, but in my lack of love."
"That's not the same thing," replied Major Forsyth. "You gave your word, and now you take it back."
"I promised to do a thing over which I had no control. When I was a boy, before I had seen anything of the world, before I had ever known a woman besides my mother, I promised to love Mary Clibborn all my life. Oh, it was cruel to let me be engaged to her! You blame me; don't you think all of you are a little to blame as well?"
"What could we have done?"
"Why didn't you tell me not to be hasty? Why didn't you say that I was too young to become engaged?"
"We thought it would steady you."
"But a young man doesn't want to be steadied. Let him see life and taste all it has to offer. It is wicked to put fetters on his wrists before ever he has seen anything worth taking. What is the virtue that exists only because temptation is impossible!"
"I can't understand you, Jamie," said Mrs. Parsons, sadly. "You talk so differently from when you were a boy."
"Did you expect me to remain all my life an ignorant child. You've never given me any freedom. You've hemmed me in with every imaginable barrier. You've put me on a leading-string, and thanked God that I did not stray."