“You respect Mr. Bounderby very much,” she quietly returned. “It is natural that you should.”

He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of the world, and thought, “Now, how am I to take this?”

“You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Bounderby has said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind,” said Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped⁠—in all the singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously very ill at ease⁠—“to show the nation the way out of all its difficulties.”