The sun had gone down gloriously upon a calm sea; the sky was overspread with clouds still flushed, and the pleasant coolness of the air foretold to-morrow's breeze on the English Channel.

With pretence of watching a steamer that had passed, Arnold drew Miss Derwent to a part of the deck where they would be alone.
"You will feel," he said abruptly, "that you know England better now that you have seen something of the England beyond seas." "I had imagined it pretty well," replied Irene.
"Yes, one does." Under common circumstances, Arnold would have scornfully denied the possibility of such imagination.

He felt most unpleasantly tame.
"You wouldn't care to make your home out yonder ?" "Heaven forbid!" This was better.

It sounded like emphatic rejection of Trafford Romaine, and probably was meant to sound so.
"I myself," he pursued absently, "shall always live in England.

If I know myself, I can be of most service at the centre of things.
Parliament, when the moment arrives----" "The moment when you can be most mischievous ?" said Irene, with a glance at him.
"That's how you put it.