"Nonsense! By Jove, it isn't nonsense at all: come, Jane; here I am: come, at any rate you can say something." Lady.

"Yes, I suppose I can say something." Gentleman.

"Well, which is it to be; take me or leave me ?" Lady--very slowly, and with a voice perhaps hardly articulate, carrying on, at the same time, her engineering works on a wider scale.

"Well, I don't exactly want to leave you." And so the matter was settled: settled with much propriety and satisfaction; and both the lady and gentleman would have thought, had they ever thought about the matter at all, that this, the sweetest moment of their lives, had been graced by all the poetry by which such moments ought to be hallowed.
When Mary had, as she thought, properly subdued young Frank, the offer of whose love she, at any rate, knew was, at such a period of his life, an utter absurdity, then she found it necessary to subdue herself.

What happiness on earth could be greater than the possession of such a love, had the true possession been justly and honestly within her reach?
What man could be more lovable than such a man as would grow from such a boy?
And then, did she not love him,--love him already, without waiting for any change?
Did she not feel that there was that about him, about him and about herself, too, which might so well fit them for each other?
It would be so sweet to be the sister of Beatrice, the daughter of the squire, to belong to Greshamsbury as a part and parcel of itself.
But though she could not restrain these thoughts, it never for a moment occurred to her to take Frank's offer in earnest.