When once on a common platform with a man of agile tongue instigated by his intellectual demon to pursue inquiries into her moral resources, after a ruthless exposure of the wrecked material, she would have to be, after the various fashions, defiant, if she was to hold her own against pressure; and seeing, as she must, the road of prudence point to conciliation, it was calculable that she would take it.

Hence a string of possible events, astounding to mankind, but equally calculable, should one care to give imagination headway.

Gower looked signally Captain Abrane's 'fiddler' while he waited at Livia's house door.

A studious intimacy with such a lady was rather like the exposure of the silver moon to the astronomer's telescope.
The Dame will have nought of an interview and colloquy not found mentioned in her collection of ballads, concerning a person quite secondary in Dr.Glossop's voluminous papers.

She as vehemently prohibits a narration of Gower Woodseer's proposal some hours later, for the hand of the Countess of Fleetwood's transfixed maid Madge, because of the insignificance of the couple; and though it was a quaint idyll of an affection slowly formed, rationally based while seeming preposterous, tending to bluntly funny utterances on both sides.