Gabriel rose and bowed, and held out his hand.

Mrs.Alfred Dinks said, "How do you do ?" and seated herself without taking the hand.
Time had not softened her face, but sharpened it, and her eyes were of a fierce blackness.

She looked forty years old; and there was a permanent frown of her dark brows.
"So this silly May is going to marry you ?" said she, addressing Gabriel.
Surprised by this kind of congratulation, but also much amused by it, as if there could be nothing so ludicrous as the idea of May not marrying a man who loved her as he loved, Gabriel gravely responded, "Yes, ma'am, she is set upon it." Fanny Newt, who had seated herself with an air of utter and chronic contempt and indifference, and who looked away from Gabriel the moment she had spoken to him, now turned toward him again suddenly with an expression like that of an animal which pricks up his ears.

The keen fire of the old days shot for a moment into her eyes, for it was the first word of badinage or humor that Fanny Newt had heard for a long, long time.
"A woman who is such a fool as to marry ought to be unhappy," she replied, with her eyes fixed upon Gabriel.
"A man who persuades her to do it ought to be taken out and hung," answered he, with aphoristic gravity.
Fanny was perplexed.
"Better to be the slave of a parent than a husband," she continued.
"I'd lock him out," retorted Gabriel, with pure irrelevancy; "I'd scotch his sheets; I'd pour water in his boots; I'd sift sand in his hair-brush; I'd spatter vitriol on his shirts.

A man who marries a woman deserves nothing better." He wagged his foot carelessly, took up one of the books upon the table, and looked into it indifferently.