My cousin for a while was mightily pleased with the contract; but when the liquor had brought him to a point where he was entirely candid with himself, he let slip the fact that after all there was regret at the bottom of the goblet, metaphorically and actually.

Before his final surrender to drink he dropped the immediate consideration of the contract and said:-- "Malcolm, I have in my time known many fools, but if you will permit an old man, who loves you dearly, to make a plain statement of his conviction--" "Certainly," I interrupted.
"It would be a great relief to me," he continued, "to say that I believe you to be the greatest fool the good God ever permitted to live." "I am sure, Sir George, that your condescending flattery is very pleasing," I said.
Sir George, unmindful of my remark, continued, "Your disease is not usually a deadly malady, as a look about you will easily show; but, Malcolm, if you were one whit more of a fool, you certainly would perish." I was not offended, for I knew that my cousin meant no offence.
"Then, Sir George, if the time ever comes when I wish to commit suicide, I have always at hand an easy, painless mode of death.

I shall become only a little more of a fool." I laughingly said, "I will do my utmost to absorb a little wisdom now and then as a preventive." "Never a bit of wisdom will you ever absorb.

A man who would refuse a girl whose wealth and beauty are as great as Dorothy's, is past all hope.

I often awaken in the dark corners of the night when a man's troubles stalk about his bed like livid demons; and when I think that all of this evil which has come up between Dorothy and me, and all of this cursed estrangement which is eating out my heart could have been averted if you had consented to marry her, I cannot but feel--" "But, Sir George," I interrupted, "it was Dorothy, not I, who refused.