Perhaps you make too little allowance for human weakness.' 'Human weakness is a plea that has been much abused, and generally in an interested spirit.' This was something like a personal rebuke.

Whether she so meant it, Barfoot could not determine.

He hoped she did, for the more personal their talk became the better he would be pleased.
'I, for one,' he said, 'very seldom urge that plea, whether in my own defence or another's.

But it answers to a spirit we can't altogether dispense with.

Don't you feel ever so little regret that your severe logic prevailed ?' 'Not the slightest regret.' Everard thought this answer magnificent.