release time:2023-12-07 02:07:15 source:Roe head mouse net author:{typename type="name"/}
"I tell you fairly that I think you altogether wrong -- that it is cowardly, unmanly, and disgraceful. I don't mean, you see, to put what you call a fine point upon it."
"It is one of those matters on which a person must speak the truth or not speak at all. I should not have spoken unless you forced it upon me. You don't care for her in the least."
"That's true. I do not know that I am especially quick at what you call caring for young ladies. If I care for anybody it is for you."
"I suppose so; but that may as well be dropped for the present. You mean to marry this girl simply because she has got a lot of money?"
"Exactly that -- as you before long will marry some gentleman only because he has got money."
"You have no right to say so because I am engaged to no man. But if I were so it is quite different. Unless I marry I can be nobody. I can have no existence that I can call my own. I have no other way of pushing myself into the world's notice. You are a man."
"You mean to say that I could become a merchant or a lawyer -- be a Lord Chancellor in time, or perhaps an Archbishop of Canterbury." "You can live and eat and drink and go where you wish without being dependent on anyone. If I had your freedom and your means do you think that I would marry for money?"
In this dialogue the main part was taken by Mr Frank Houston, whose ambition it was to marry Miss Gertrude Tringle, and the lady's part by his cousin and intimate friend, Miss Imogene Docimer. The scene was a walk through a pine forest on the southern slopes of the Tyrolean Alps, and the occasion had been made a little more exhilarating than usual by the fact that Imogene had been strongly advised both by her brother, Mr Mudbury Docimer, and by her sister-in law, Mrs Mudbury Docimer, not to take any more distant rambles with her far-away cousin Frank Houston. In the teeth of that advice this walk was taken, and the conversation in the pine wood had at the present moment arrived at the point above given.
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