'Has he no tastes or inclinations of his own ?' 'Yes, he has, plenty of them, and much loftier tastes than mine, I can tell you.

But he's kind enough to let me hang on to him, and to put up with my frivolity.

There never were two men more different than he and I are; and I suppose that's why we get on so well together.

When we were in Paris he was always up to his eyes in serious work--lectures, public libraries, workmen's syndicates, Mary Anne, the International--heaven knows what, making himself master of the political situation in France; while I was _rigolant_ and _chaloupant_ at the Bal Bullier.' It was generous of Maulevrier to speak of his hanger-on thus; and no doubt the society of a well-informed earnest young man was a great good for Maulevrier, a good far above the price of those pounds, shillings, and pence which the Earl might spend for his dependent's benefit; but when a girl of Mary's ardent temper has made a hero of a man, it galls her to think that her hero's dignity should be sacrificed, his honour impeached, were it by the merest tittle.
Maulevrier made a good many inquiries about his grandmother, and seemed really full of kindness and sympathy; but it was with a feeling of profound awe, nay, of involuntary reluctance and shrinking, that he presently entered her ladyship's sitting-room, ushered in by Mary, who had been to her grandmother beforehand to announce the grandson's arrival.
The young man had hardly ever been in a sick room before.

He half expected to see Lady Maulevrier in bed, with a crowd of medicine bottles and a cut orange on a table by her side, and a sick nurse of the ancient-crone species cowering over the fire.