The man first--the money afterwards: that was always my motto, and always will be.

What do you take me for?
Do you suppose I would give Christina to a vicious person?
do you suppose I would sacrifice my precious child, little comfort as I have in her, to a man against whose character one word could be breathed?
Casamassima is only too good, he 's a saint of saints, he 's stupidly good! There is n't such another in the length and breadth of Europe.

What he has been through in this house, not a common peasant would endure.

Christina has treated him as you would n't treat a dog.

He has been insulted, outraged, persecuted! He has been driven hither and thither till he did n't know where he was.