It had everything to take, and it seemed bent on taking everything.

It was bad enough in the beginning, when she had given herself up, body and soul, to the spinal lady; but to go and marry the brother, without first disposing of the spinal lady in a comfortable home for spines, why, what must the man be like who could let her do it?
"My dear," said Mrs.Eliott, "he's a saint, if you're to believe Anne." Even Dr.Gardner smiled.

"I can't say that's exactly what I should call him." "Need we," said Mr.Eliott, "call him anything?
So long as she thinks him a saint--" Mr.Eliott--Mr.Johnson Eliott--hovered on the borderland of culture, with a spirit purified from commerce by a Platonic passion for the exact sciences.

He was, therefore, received in Thurston Square on his own as well as his wife's merits.

He too had his little weaknesses.