And in spite of his unpleasant irritation at finding this "average" woman not overawed by his oracular utterances, nor easily beaten in a controversy, Albert had a respect for her deeper than ever.

There was something in her anger at Westcott that for a moment had seemed finer than anything he had seen in the self-possessed Miss Minorkey.

But then she was so weak as to allow her intellectual conclusions to be influenced by her feelings, and to be intolerant.
I have said that this thing of falling in love is a very complex catastrophe.

I might say that it is also a very uncertain one.

Since we all of us "rub clothes with fate along the street," who knows whether Charlton would not, by this time, have been in love with Miss Marlay if he had not seen Miss Minorkey in the stage?
If he had not run against her, while madly chasing a grasshopper?
If he had not had a great curiosity about a question in botany which he could only settle in her company?
And even yet, if he had not had collision with Isa on the question of Divine Providence?
And even after that collision I will not be sure that the scale might not have been turned, had it not been that while he was holding this conversation with Isa Marlay, his mother and sister had come into the next room.