"Embrace me! Good heavens, what an escape I have had! So this too is characteristic of your friend?" "You said he was a bear. If so, he should have given you a hug on the first opportunity." "He didn't have an opportunity, and he never will." "Poor fellow! It will make him sick if I tell him so. Well, since it is another case of beauty and the beast, what did the beast say?" "He said that it was very proper he should say to me after all his hatefulness. He said, 'I beg your pardon.'" "And then I suppose you kissed and made up." "Hush, you horrid thing. I noticed him no more than I would a chair that I might have stumbled over." "Thus displaying that sweet trait of yours--Charity. But I thought it was he that stumbled over you?" "A musty, miserable pun! It was he, and I'm delighted it so happened, that the first time he ever spoke to me he had to ask my pardon." "Well, well! I'm glad it so happened, too, and that the ice is broken between you, for Van Berg is a good friend of mine, and it would be confoundedly disagreeable to have you two lowering at each other across a bloody chasm of dark, revengeful thoughts." "The ice isn't broken at all. He has begged my pardon as he ought to do a hundred times; but I haven't granted it, and I never will. What's more, I'll never speak to him in all my life; never, never!" "Swear it by the 'inconstant moon'!" "Hush, here he comes. Ah, 'peste!' his table is right opposite ours." "Who is that tall and rather distinguished-looking gentleman that just entered?" asked Mrs. Mayhew, suddenly emerging from a pre-occupation with her supper which a good appetite had induced. "He IS distinguished, or will be. He's a particular friend of Ida's, and is as rich as Croesus."