"What is there so shocking," replied the old gentleman, "in my liking a pretty girl--ay, and in making her my wife, too, if I think proper? But that's as it may be--I have not yet made her the offer." Mrs. Clavering breathed again. "Really, Uncle Philip," said she, "I thought you had more sense, and knew more of the world. Can you not see at once that all she wants is your money? It is impossible she could have any other inducement." "I thank you for your compliment," said Uncle Philip, pulling up his shirt collar and taking a glance at the looking-glass. "Is the man an absolute fool?" thought Mrs. Clavering: "what can have got into him?" Then raising her voice, she exclaimed--"Is this, then, the end of all your aversion to the French?" "Then you should not have put the French in my way," said Uncle Philip: "it is all your own fault; and if I _should_ play the fool, you have nobody to thank but yourself. Why did you make me go to that supper?" "Why, indeed!" replied Mrs. Clavering, with a sigh: "but knowing how much you dislike foreigners and all their ways, such an idea as your falling in love with a French girl never for a moment entered my mind. But I can tell you one thing that will effectually put all thoughts of Miss Robertine out of your head." "What is that?" said Uncle Philip, starting and changing colour. "When I tell you that she is a mantua-maker," pursued Mrs. Clavering, "and in the employ of Madame Gigot of New York, you, of course, can never again think of her as a wife." "And why not?" said Uncle Philip, recovering himself--"why should not a mantua-maker be thought of as a wife? If that's all you have to say against her, it only makes me like her the better. I honour the girl for engaging in a business that procures her a decent living, and prevents her from being burdensome to her friends. Don't you know that a man can always raise his wife to his own level? It is only a woman that sinks by marrying beneath her; as I used to tell you when you fell in love with the players, the first winter you spent in New York." "I deny the players--I deny them altogether," said Mrs. Clavering, with much warmth: "all I admired was their spangled jackets and their caps and feathers, and I had some curiosity to see how they looked off the stage, and therefore was always glad when I met any of them in the street." "Well, well," replied Uncle Philip, "let the players pass; I was only joking." "And even if it were true," resumed Mrs. Clavering, "that I had particularly admired one or two of the most distinguished performers, I was then but a mere child, and there is a great difference between playing the fool at sixteen and at sixty." "I don't see the folly," said Uncle Philip, "of marrying a pretty young girl, who is so devotedly attached to me that she cannot possibly help showing it continually." "Robertine attached to _you_!" retorted Mrs. Clavering. "And can you really believe such an absurdity?"