He wore every day of the year, whatever the occasion, the same little black "cut away" coat, of the fashion of his younger time; he wore the same cool-looking trousers, chequered in black and white--the proper harmony with which, he inveterately considered, was a sprigged blue satin necktie; and, over his concave little stomach, quaintly indifferent to climates and seasons, a white duck waistcoat.

"Should you really," he now asked, "like me to marry ?" He spoke as if, coming from his daughter herself, it MIGHT be an idea; which, for that matter, he would be ready to carry out should she definitely say so.
Definite, however, just yet, she was not prepared to be, though it seemed to come to her with force, as she thought, that there was a truth, in the connection, to utter.

"What I feel is that there is somehow something that used to be right and that I've made wrong.

It used to be right that you hadn't married, and that you didn't seem to want to.

It used also"-- she continued to make out "to seem easy for the question not to come up.