“I have never brought myself to mention it openly to you, Mr. Headstone, and you’re my witness that I couldn’t even make up my mind to take it from you before we came out tonight; but it’s a painful thing to think that if I get on as well as you hope, I shall be⁠—I won’t say disgraced, because I don’t mean disgraced⁠—but⁠—rather put to the blush if it was known⁠—by a sister who has been very good to me.”

“Yes,” said Bradley Headstone in a slurring way, for his mind scarcely seemed to touch that point, so smoothly did it glide to another, “and there is this possibility to consider. Some man who had worked his way might come to admire⁠—your sister⁠—and might even in time bring himself to think of marrying⁠—your sister⁠—and it would be a sad drawback and a heavy penalty upon him, if; overcoming in his mind other inequalities of condition and other considerations against it, this inequality and this consideration remained in full force.”

“That’s much my own meaning, sir.”