My cousin is here now to talk to me,--about his own affairs, and I mean to see him,--alone." Then she left the little room, and went down to that in which Frank was waiting for her, without the company of Miss Cassewary.
"Do you really mean," she said after they had been together for some minutes, "that you had the courage to ask the Duke for his daughter's hand ?" "Why not ?" "I believe you would dare do anything." "I couldn't very well take it without asking him." "As I am not acquainted with the young lady I don't know how that might be." "And if I took her so, I should have to take her empty-handed." "Which wouldn't suit;--would it ?" "It wouldn't suit for her,--whose comforts and happiness are much more to me than my own." "No doubt! Of course you are terribly in love." "Very thoroughly in love, I think, I am." "For the tenth time, I should say." "For the second only.

I don't regard myself as a monument of constancy, but I think I am less fickle than some other people." "Meaning me!" "Not especially." "Frank, that is ill-natured, and almost unmanly,--and false also.
When have I been fickle?
You say that there was one before with you.
I say that there has never really been one with me at all.

No one knows that better than yourself.

I cannot afford to be in love till I am quite sure that the man is fit to be, and will be, my husband." "I doubt sometimes whether you are capable of being in love with any one." "I think I am," she said, very gently.

"But I am at any rate capable of not being in love till I wish it.