I have no wish at all to do that.

It is not that of which I was thinking.
Harry is welcome to all his happiness; that is, if Gertrude can be brought to make him happy.' Linda, made no answer now; but the tear came running down her face, and her eyes became dim, and her heart beat very quick, and she didn't quite remember where she was.

Up to this moment no man had spoken a word of love to Linda Woodward, and to some girls the first word is very trying.
'Interfere with Harry!' Alaric repeated again, and renewed his attack on the ferns.

'Well, Linda, what an opinion you must have of me!' Linda was past answering; she could not protest--nor would it have been expedient to do so--that her opinion of her companion was not unfavourable.
'Gertrude is beautiful, very beautiful,' he continued, still beating about the bush as modest lovers do, and should do; 'but she is not the only beautiful girl in Surbiton Cottage, nor to my eyes is she the most so.' Linda was now quite beside herself.

She knew that decorum required that she should say something stiff and stately to repress such language, but if all her future character for propriety had depended on it, she could not bring herself to say a word.