“Tut! Let us have done with that. We know very well how it was. Why should you and I talk about it, when you and I can’t disguise it? To proceed. I am disappointed and cut a poor figure.”

“Am I no one?”

“Someone⁠—and I was coming to you, if you had waited a moment. You, too, are disappointed and cut a poor figure.”

“An injured figure!”

“You are now cool enough, Sophronia, to see that you can’t be injured without my being equally injured; and that therefore the mere word is not to the purpose. When I look back, I wonder how I can have been such a fool as to take you to so great an extent upon trust.”

“And when I look back⁠—” the bride cries, interrupting.

“And when you look back, you wonder how you can have been⁠—you’ll excuse the word?”