‘Why, ma’am?’

’You have given your word.  “He never breaks his lightest word,” she says.’

‘It sounds like the beginning of respect.’

‘The rarest thing men teach women to feel for them!’

’A respectable love match—­eh?  Good Lord!  You’ll be civil to my friend.  You have struck him to the dust.  You have your one poetical admirer in him.’

‘I am honoured, Russett.’

’Cleared out, I suppose?  Abrane is a funnel for pouring into that Bank.  Have your fun as you like it!  I shall get supplies to-morrow.  By the way, you have that boy Cressett here.  What are you doing with him?’

Livia spoke of watching over him and guarding him: 

’He was at the table beside me, bursting to have a fling; and my friend Mr. Woodseer said, it was “Adonis come to spy the boar":—­the picture!’

Prompt as bugle to the breath, Livia proposed to bet him fifty pounds that she would keep young Cressett from gambling a single louis.  The pretty saying did not touch her.

Fleetwood moved and bowed.  Sir Meeson Corby simulated a petrifaction of his frame at seeing the Countess of Fleetwood actually partly bent with her gracious acknowledgement of the tramp’s gawky homage.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory
Amused after their tiresome work of slaughter
And her voice, against herself, was for England
As for comparisons, they are flowers thrown into the fire
As if the age were the injury! 
Brains will beat Grim Death if we have enough of them
But a great success is full of temptations
Could affect me then, without being flung at me
Country enclosed us to make us feel snug in our own importance
Did not know the nature of an oath, and was dismissed
Dogs’ eyes have such a sick look of love
Drank to show his disdain of its powers
Earl of Cressett fell from his coach-box in a fit
Father used to say, four hours for a man, six for a woman
Fond, as they say, of his glass and his girl
Found that he ‘cursed better upon water’
Good-bye to sorrow for a while—­Keep your tears for the living
Had got the trick of lying, through fear of telling the truth
Hard enough for a man to be married to a fool
He was a figure on a horse, and naught when off it
Her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather
I hate sleep:  I hate anything that robs me of my will
Innocence and uncleanness may go together
It was an honest buss, but dear at ten thousand
Limit was two bottles of port wine at a sitting
Little boy named Tommy Wedger said he saw a dead body go by
Mighty Highnesses who had only smelt the outside edge of battle
No enemy’s shot is equal to a weak heart in the act
Not afford to lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win
Past, future, and present, the three weights upon