"I am sorry that nothing I say meets with your approval," he said sadly.
It was lack of tact that made him use the personal tone when he and she had so far to travel perforce together, and she, being excited and much perturbed in spirit, had not the grace to answer wisely.
"Happily it matters little whether what you say pleases me or not." She meant in earnestness to depreciate herself, and to exalt that higher tribunal before which all opinions are arraigned; still, there was in the answer a tinge of spite, telling him by the way that it did not distress her to differ with him.

It was not wonderful that Trenholme, self-conscious with the love she did not guess at, took the words only as a challenge to his admiration.
"Indeed you wrong me.

It was long ago I proved the value I put upon your advice by acting upon it in the most important decision of my life." She had so long tacitly understood what her influence over him at that time had been that she could not now be much affected by the avowal.
"Indeed, if you recklessly mistook the advice of a vain child for wisdom, it is to be hoped that Providence has shaped your ends for you." He did not understand her mood; he only thought of protesting his long loyalty to her.

"It is true," said he, "that Providence has done more for me than I have done for myself; but I have always been glad to attribute my coming here to your beneficent influence." Her heart was like flint to him at that moment, and in his clumsiness he struck sparks from it.
"Yet when I remember how you tried to explain to me then that the poor parish in which you were working might be offering the nobler life-work for you, I think that you were wiser than I.In their serious moments people can judge best for themselves, Mr.Trenholme." He had noticed that, in the rare times she addressed him by name, she never used his big-sounding title of Principal.

This little habit of hers, differently read before, seemed now like a clue to guide him to the meaning of her last remark, partly wrapped as it was in her politeness.