"Let us hope for the best. It is too late at any rate to think about that, and as it is to be done, I have come to tell you."
"Very well. I suppose you are right to tell me. Of course you know that I can do nothing for you; and I don't suppose that you can do anything for me. As far as your own welfare goes, if she has a large fortune,--"
"Then I look upon it as an act of simple madness, and can only say that as such I shall treat it. I have nothing in my power, and therefore I can neither do you good or harm; but I will not hear any particulars, and I can only advise you to break it off, let the trouble be what it may."
"Then I have nothing more to say. Don't ask me to be present, and don't ask me to see her."
"I do not care one straw what her name is."
"Adelaide Muggins would be exactly the same thing to me. My dear Gerard, I have lived too long in the world to believe that men can coin into money the noble blood of well-born wives. Twenty thousand pounds is worth more than all the blood of all the Howards, and a wife even with twenty thousand pounds would make you a poor, embarrassed, and half-famished man."
"Then I suppose I shall be whole famished, as she certainly has not got a quarter of that sum."
"Yet, sir, married men with families have lived on my income."
"And on less than a quarter of it. The very respectable man who brushes my clothes no doubt does so. But then you see he has been brought up in that way. I suppose that you as a bachelor put by every year at least half your income?"
"I never put by a shilling, sir. Indeed, I owe a few hundred pounds."
"And yet you expect to keep a house over your head, and an expensive wife and family, with lady's maid, nurses, cook, footman, and grooms, on a sum which has been hitherto insufficient for your own wants! I didn't think you were such an idiot, my boy."
"I dare say not. Probably she is a horsewoman. As far as I know anything of your life that is the sphere in which you will have made the lady's acquaintance."
"No doubt, and so do you; and it will be very easy to say whither you will ride together if you are fools enough to get married. I can only advise you to do nothing of the kind. Is there anything else?"