I Forbid the Banns! — page 297: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ON FRENCH PORCELAIN. 287 merits were beauty, brightness, intelligence, freshness; and nearly twelve thousand pounds a year. While these reflections were coming to him, Bertha entered the room, and glanced around. He could see that her eyes had a delicate border of pink about them. She had been weeping. “My beloved!” said he, putting his arm about her. ‘“Why should you be cut up because a country jackanapes endeavors to impress you with the idea that he is a man about town? They are gone—those young asses—and I can promise you that you will not be troubled with them again.” “Why should they talk in that way to me—just as if I were a man, and as if I had known them all my life?” said Bertha. He knew quite well what was the only answer he could make to her. But how could he tell her that it was because it was taken for granted that she was occupying the same house with a man who was not her husband? Women who do this are the women in whose presence men do not mod- ulate their voices or their expressions. “My dearest, they are country fools,’ said he. ‘ They are no more Offensive than their mothers or their sisters.” “If these are examples of your Brackenshire people, I shall go back to one of my sheep-runs, Among the shepherds and the shearers and stock keepers I am cer- tain to be among gentlemen—men with good hearts and good sense—very different from those silly, bragging boys.” | ‘“No, my love, we shall not go to the wilds of Australia— we shall go to the wilds of London instead. There I promise you that you shall have all the intellect of the town at your feet.” He knew that if her beauty failed to bring the intellect of the town to her feet, the fact of her possessing about (EMPMICLYOOlKS (EC)