“No great emergency, as you phrase it, at all, but what to men like yourself is frequently just as trying,--an occasion that requires a little tact. I have discovered--what I long anticipated has come to pass--Conyers and Fifine are on very close terms of intimacy, which might soon become attachment. I have charged him with it, and he has not altogether denied it. On the whole he has behaved well, and he goes away to-night.” “I have just seen him, Dinah. I got at his secret, not without a little dexterity on my part, and learned what had passed between you. We talked the thing over very calmly together, and the upshot is--he's not going.” “Not going! not going! after the solemn assurance he gave me!” “But of which I absolved him, sister Dinah; or rather, which I made him retract.” “Peter Barrington, stop!” cried she, holding her hands to her temples. “I want a little time to recover myself. I must have time, or I'll not answer for my senses. Just reply to one question. I 'll ask you, have you taken an oath--are you under a vow to be the ruin of your family?” “I don't think I have, Dinah. I 'm doing everything for the best.” “If there's a phrase in the language condemns the person that uses it, it's 'Doing everything for the best.' What does it mean but a blind, uninquiring, inconsiderate act, the work of a poor brain and sickly conscience? Don't talk to me, sir, of doing for the best, but do the best, the very best, according to the lights that guide you. You know well, perfectly well, that Fifine has no fortune, and that this young man belongs to a very rich and a very ambitious family, and that to encourage what might lead to attachment between them would be to store up a cruel wrong and a great disappointment.” “My dear Dinah, you speak like a book, but I don't agree with you.” “You don't. Will you please to state why?” “In the first place, Dinah, forgive me for saying it, but we men do not take _your_ view of these cases. We neither think that love is as catching or as dangerous as the smallpox. We imagine that two young people can associate together every day and yet never contract a lien that might break their hearts to dissolve.” “Talking politics together, perhaps; or the state of the Three per Cents?” “Not exactly that, but talking of fifty other things that interest their time of life and tempers. Have they not songs, drawings, flowers, landscapes, and books, with all their thousand incidents, to discuss? Just remember what that writer who calls himself 'Author of Waverley'--what he alone has given us of people to talk over just as if we knew them.”