"He's fit to be a cabinet minister, which, I'm quite sure, he'd like much better. And now you know everything; but no,--there is one thing you don't know yet. When I tell you that, you'll want to make him an archangel or a prime minister. 'We'll go abroad,' he said,--and remember, this was his own proposition, made long before I was able to speak a word;--'We'll go abroad, and you shall get your cousin Alice to go with us.' That touched me more than anything. Only think if he had proposed Mrs. Marsham!"
"But yet he does not like me."
"You're wrong there, Alice. There has been no question of liking or of disliking. He thought you would be a kind of Mrs. Marsham, and when you were not, but went out flirting among the ruins with Jeffrey Palliser, instead--"

"'We'll go abroad,' he said, and before I could say a word, he added, "and you shall get your cousin Alice to go with us.' That touched me more than anything. Only think if he had proposed Mrs. Marsham!"
"But he does not like me."
"You're wrong there, Alice. When you went out flirting among the ruins with Jeffrey Palliser-"
