"You would have made an admirable mother, madam." This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.
"It is," he continued, "ten thousand pities that you are not one." "Do you think so ?" She spoke with humility.
"I would," he went on, "that heaven had given you a daughter." "Would you have thought her worthy of Richard ?" "Our blood, madam, should have been one!" The lady tapped her toe with her parasol.

"But I am a mother," she said.
"Richard is my son.

Yes! Richard is my boy," she reiterated.
Sir Austin most graciously appended, "Call him ours, madam," and held his head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however, she chose to refuse, or defer.

They made the coloured West a common point for their eyes, and then Sir Austin said: "As you will not say 'ours,' let me.

And, as you have therefore an equal claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have lately conceived." The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal, but for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount to a declaration.