"You know I didn't allude to you." "I accept your apology, sir," said she with equally elaborate politeness.

"I would make you a curtsy if I were standing up, but you wouldn't wish me to rise for the purpose.

Did you not see, though, anything at all like the ruins of a Roman villa or house at Brading ?" The Captain took a pinch of snuff, as if to digest the matter before answering her question.
"Well, ma'am," he began, after a long pause of cogitation, "we were shown some bits of brickwork, marked out in divisions like the foundations of a house: and a place with a hole in the floor which, they said, was a bath-room.

We also saw a piece or two of tesselated pavement, with a lot of other gimcracks; but I certainly had to exercise a good deal of fancy to imagine a villa out of all these scattered details, like the Marchioness in Dickens' _Old Curiosity Shop_, which I was reading the other day, `made believe' about her orange-peel wine!" "Then we didn't lose much by not accompanying you ?" she remarked.

"I was rather sorry afterwards I was unable to go." "Lose anything ?" he repeated with emphasis, "I should think not, indeed! If my poor legs could speak, they would tell you that you've gained `pretty considerably,' as a Yankee would say, by remaining comfortably here.