'I am not ill-bred. Had I received you with anything but a downright refusal your hopes would have risen. Had I agreed with you in anything, you would have thought, "I may manage him yet." I have been kind to you. I have been most polite. I have not deceived you for an instant. Do not think that the suave manner is the sign of the kind heart. What is called politeness is, as you know, the commonest form of hypocrisy; courtesy has become etiquette, and the gentleman is the ghost of a dead chivalry.' 'You are a braggart as well as a sophist. You----' 'Go away till you learn to do other than assert and call names.' 'I will speak. You said a little while ago that when an opinion became popular, you, in effect, adopted its converse.' 'Too hard and fast; but go on.' 'Marriage is coming to be regarded more and more as a mere civil relation; you will, I have no doubt, look upon it as a sacred thing. If the heart does not go along with a holy ordinance, it is the blackest sin to take part in it. Will you play the devil to your own daughter?' 'Ah, this is better!' said Lee with glistening eyes. 'In the same way any marriage not consented to by the woman's father must be unholy also. Two evils you see.' 'Who can doubt which is the less?' 'Now you are the sophist. There is no less or greater evil; it is all tarred with the same stick. But, to take a broader view. I firmly believe that marriages are made in heaven; therefore I should suppose, a marriage as ordained by heaven, happens once in fifty years, and it seems to me as likely that the decree of fate would be fulfilled in the father's choice as in the daughter's; and much more so when the father is a past master in the study of character.' Frank was exasperated. 'Have you no heart?' he said. The smile on Lee's face told him what a commonplace he had uttered. Smothering his emotion, he said, 'You teach me how to think and how to act. Marriages _are_ made in heaven, and you were not married. If you had been you would have loved your daughter. A man of your no-principles must be answered as the fool is--according to his folly. And indeed you are a kind of fool, and a bad kind. I said before, thoughtlessly, that I would stick at nothing in endeavouring to make Miss Chartres my wife. Now I repeat it with full purpose.' 'Good,' said Lee, rubbing his hands. 'Still a little too much nicknaming, but, on the whole, good. You are a capital collaborateur. I have taught you how to think and act already. Are you not astonished at yourself? What would they think at your debating club of this talk of ours? If you like it, come back and have some more.' Frank went to the door in silence, but returned again. 'Ah!' exclaimed Lee. '"He often took leave, but was loath to depart!" What! Is it meant to be considered by me evidence of your determined spirit? Eh? Is it a dodge?'