"Do you want me to believe that a woman will not marry a man until she has first tortured the soul out of him, and made him utterly miserable? Why, they say that marriages are made in heaven."
"In heaven they may be made, Thomas; but, if so, they are caught on the horns of the moon as they are coming down; for I tell you that hardly any woman ever marries the right man, and hardly any man ever marries the right woman. You have only to open your eyes and you will perceive this without the aid of an opera-glass."
"My observations have led me to no such conclusions."
"Have you never observed, oh, most sagacious Thomas, that no pretty woman ever had an adorer without wishing to torment him with a rival? And is it not a singular fact that she usually selects some male animal to occupy that position who is in every respect the inferior of the worthy man whom she is endeavoring to drive to distraction? Does she not take every occasion to inflate the vanity of him whom she cares nothing about, and to humiliate the man whom she really loves? Now, there are Claribel Carrington and Imogen Hazlewood,--they are both pretty women."
"Pretty! They are both surpassingly beautiful, though not at all alike!--the former a blonde, with deep blue eyes and golden tresses; the latter a brunette, with locks as dark as a feather fallen from the wings of night, and black eyes, from which Cupid, who continually lurks under the long lashes, borrows the barbs for the arrows with which he mortally wounds multitudes of unlucky swains."
"Do not be poetical, Thomas. Pray take your foot from the stirrup and dismount before Pegasus carries you to the clouds, and you lose an opportunity of listening to plain, sensible prose. Each one of these young ladies has a devoted lover."
"You may well say devoted; for if Claribel or Imogen were to wish for an icicle from the end of the North Pole with which to cool a lemonade, either Harry Vincent or Clarence Hastings would hurry thither and slip off into the unfathomable abyss of space in a desperate attempt to obtain it."
"Your imagination is both hyperborean and hyperbolical. But let us return from the North Pole to the ladies. Claribel loves Clarence, and Imogen Harry, and yet neither will marry the man she loves."