Defeat here meant the ruin of his worldly prospects as well as of his love.

He was the kind of man with whom the present must always be paramount; for the time being he had absolutely forgotten Josephine Hart, for the time being he thought himself honestly, deeply in love with Beatrice.
So he talked and talked, until poor Beatrice felt both her head and heart aching.
"I am not in your rank of life," she said at last, as her final thrust.
"My set is not the same as yours; my people can never belong to yours--my dear old mother is a lady at heart, but she has not the outward polish of your mother.

You want me to be your wife now, but by-and-bye you will remember the gulf which socially lies between us." "How can you talk such nonsense?
You are one of nature's ladies.

Ask my mother what she thinks of you.

Ask Catherine.