“Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little I do claim, but I will go that length. You have done so much for him, you are so fond of him; your whole life, Mrs. Bounderby, expresses such charming self-forgetfulness on his account⁠—pardon me again⁠—I am running wide of the subject. I am interested in him for his own sake.”

She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have risen in a hurry and gone away. He had turned the course of what he said at that instant, and she remained.

“ Mrs. Bounderby,” he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet with a show of effort in assuming it, which was even more expressive than the manner he dismissed; “it is no irrevocable offence in a young fellow of your brother’s years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate, and expensive⁠—a little dissipated, in the common phrase. Is he?”

“Yes.”