Another "umph" expressed my uncle's dissatisfaction--displeasure would be too strong a word--and he continued eating. "You have really some good Rhenish in your cellar, Hugh," resumed uncle Ro, after tossing off one of the knowing green glasses full--though I never could understand why any man should wish to drink his wine out of green, when he might do it out of crystal. "It must have been a purchase of mine, made when we were last in Germany, and for the use of my mother." "As you please, sir; it neither adds nor subtracts from the beauty of Martha and her friend." "Since you are disposed to make these boyish allusions, be frank with me, and say, at once, how you like my wards." "Meaning, of course, sir, my own sister exclusively. I will be as sincere as possible, and say that, as to Miss Marston, I have no opinion at all; and as to Miss Coldbrook, she is what, in Europe, would be called a 'fine' woman." "You can say nothing as to her mind, Hugh, for you have had no opportunity for forming an opinion." "Not much of a one, I will own. Nevertheless, I should have liked her better had she spared the allusion to the 'proper person' who is one day to forge a chain for my sister, to begin with." "Poh, poh; that is the mere squeamishness of a boy. I do not think her in the least pert or forward, and your construction would be _tant soit peu_ vulgar." "Put your own construction on it, _mon oncle_; _I_ do not like it." "I do not wonder young men remain unmarried; they are getting to be so ultra in their tastes and notions." A stranger might have retorted on an old bachelor, for such a speech, by some allusion to his own example; but I well knew that my uncle Ro had once been engaged, and that he lost the object of his passion by death, and too much respected his constancy and true sentiments ever to joke on such subjects. I believe he felt the delicacy of my forbearance rather more than common, for he immediately manifested a disposition to relent, and to prove it by changing the subject. "We can never stay here to-night," he said. "It would be at once to proclaim our names--our name, I might say--a name that was once so honoured and beloved in this town, and which is now so hated!" "No, no; not as bad as that. We have done nothing to merit hatred." "_Raison de plus_ for hating us so much the more heartily. When men are wronged, who have done nothing to deserve it, the evil-doer seeks to justify his wickedness to himself by striving all he can to calumniate the injured party; and the more difficulty he finds in doing that to his mind, the more profound is his hatred. Rely on it, we are most sincerely disliked here, on the spot where we were once both much beloved. Such is human nature."