He, on the contrary, scarcely looked at her at all.

He threw verbal turnips, oats, oxen, poultry, and every possible melancholy matter-of-fact thing, about the table, described the farm and his fondness for it and the neighbourhood; said a farmer's life was best, and gave Rhoda a week in which to be tired of London.
She sneered in her soul, thinking "how little he knows of the constancy in the nature of women!" adding, "when they form attachments." Anthony was shown at church, in spite of a feeble intimation he expressed, that it would be agreeable to him to walk about in the March sunshine, and see the grounds and the wild flowers, which never gave trouble, nor cost a penny, and were always pretty, and worth twenty of your artificial contrivances.
"Same as I say to Miss Dahly," he took occasion to remark; "but no!--no good.

I don't believe women hear ye, when you talk sense of that kind.
'Look,' says I, 'at a violet.' 'Look,' says she, 'at a rose.' Well, what can ye say after that?
She swears the rose looks best.

You swear the violet costs least.

Then there you have a battle between what it costs and how it looks." Robert pronounced a conventional affirmative, when called on for it by a look from Anthony.