There a few lines in that last little volume of Browning--" I stopped of my own accord, for upon reflection the lines would have made a rather embarrassing quotation.

But meanwhile Mrs.Lascelles had taken alarm on other grounds.
"Oh, _don't_ quote Browning!" "Why not ?" "He is far too deep for me; besides, I don't care for poetry, and I was asking you about Mrs.Evers." "Well," I said, with some little severity, "she's a very clever woman." "Clever enough to understand Browning ?" "Quite." If this was irony, it was also self-restraint, for it was to Catherine's enthusiasm that I owed my own.

The debt was one of such magnitude as a life of devotion could scarcely have repaid, for to whom do we owe so much as to those who first lifted the scales from our eyes and awakened within us a soul for all such things?
Catherine had been to me what I instantly desired to become to this benighted beauty; but the desire was not worth entertaining, since I hardly expected to be many minutes longer on speaking terms with Mrs.Lascelles.I recalled the fact that it was I who had broached the subject of Bob Evers and his mother, together with my unpalatable motive for so doing.

And I was seeking in my mind, against the grain, I must confess, for a short cut back to Bob, when Mrs.Lascelles suddenly led the way.
"I don't think," said she, "that Mr.Evers takes after his mother." "I'm afraid he doesn't," I replied, "in that respect." "And I am glad," she said.

"I do like a boy to be a boy.