She said that she was honored by Storri's proposal, and touched by his delicacy in first coming to her.

She could do no more, however, than grant him the permission craved, and secure to him her best wishes.
"For, much as I love my daughter," explained Mrs.Hanway-Harley, mounting a maternal pedestal and posing, "I could not think of coercing her choice.

She will marry where she loves." A sigh at this period.

"I can only say that, should she love where you desire, it cannot fail to engage my full approval." Storri pressed his lips to Mrs.Hanway-Harley's hand as well as he could for the interfering crust of diamonds, and said she had made him happy.
"It will be bliss, madam, to call myself your daughter's husband," said Storri; "but it will be highest honor to find myself your son." Storri did not tell Mrs.Hanway-Harley of those afternoon calls, and the blight of Bess to fall upon them with her eternal crops and politics and populations.

Mrs.Hanway-Harley, while she grievously suspected from Storri's sigh--which little whisper of despair still sounded in her ears--that he had met reverses, would not voice her surmise.