"Of
course my chief object is to secure my brother's happiness."

"That's very unkind to poor Mr. Harold Smith."

"Well, well, well--you know what I mean."

"Yes, I think I do know what you mean. Your brother is a gentleman of
good family, but of no means."

"Not quite so bad as that."

"Of embarrassed means, then, or anything that you will; whereas I am
a lady of no family, but of sufficient wealth. You think that if you
brought us together and made a match of it, it would be a very good
thing for--for whom?" said Miss Dunstable.

"Yes, exactly," said Mrs. Harold Smith.

"For which of us? Remember the bishop now and his nice little bit of
Latin."

"For Nathaniel then," said Mrs. Harold Smith, boldly. "It would be a
very good thing for him." And a slight smile came across her face as
she said it. "Now that's honest, or the mischief is in it."

"Yes, that's honest enough. And did he send you here to tell me
this?"

"Well, he did that, and something else."

"And now let's have the something else. The really important part, I
have no doubt, has been spoken."

"No, by no means, by no means all of it. But you are so hard on one,
my dear, with your running after honesty, that one is not able to
tell the real facts as they are. You make one speak in such a bald,
naked way."

"Ah, you think that anything naked must be indecent; even truth."

"I think it is more proper-looking, and better suited, too, for the
world's work, when it goes about with some sort of a garment on
it. We are so used to a leaven of falsehood in all we hear and say,
nowadays, that nothing is more likely to deceive us than the absolute
truth. If a shopkeeper told me that his wares were simply middling,
of course, I should think that they were not worth a farthing. But
all that has nothing to do with my poor brother. Well, what was I
saying?"

"You were going to tell me how well he would use me, no doubt."

"Something of that kind."

"That he wouldn't beat me; or spend all my money if I managed to have
it tied up out of his power; or look down on me with contempt because
my father was an apothecary! Was not that what you were going to
say?"

"I was going to tell you that you might be more happy as Mrs. Sowerby
of Chaldicotes than you can be as Miss Dunstable--"

"Of Mount Lebanon. And had Mr. Sowerby no other message to
send?--nothing about love, or anything of that sort? I should like,
you know, to understand what his feelings are