I have cause to be offended; I waive it.

I meet you on common ground, and address myself to your good sense.

Have you anything to say ?' 'Much, sir.' 'Much ?' he said, with affected incredulity.
The painful hardship for me was to reply in the vague terms he had been pleased to use.
'I have much to say, your Highness.

First, to ask pardon of you, without excusing myself.' 'A condition, apparently, that absolves the necessity for the grant.
Speak precisely.' But I was as careful as he in abstaining from any direct indication of his daughter's complicity, and said, 'I have offended your Highness.
You have done me the honour to suggest that it is owing to my English training.

You will credit my assurance that the offence was not intentional, not preconceived.' 'You charge it upon your having been trained among a nation of shopkeepers ?' 'My countrymen are not illiterate or unmannerly, your Highness.' 'I have not spoken it; I may add, I do not think it.' 'I feared that your Highness entertained what I find to be a very general, perhaps here and there wilful, error with regard to England.' 'When I was in the service I had a comrade, a gallant gentleman, deeply beloved by me, and he was an Englishman.