He is perpetually in and out of this house
(crossing over to us in a boat from the hotel at Santa Lucia,
where he sleeps); and he has exactly two subjects of conversation
--the yacht for sale in the harbor here, and Miss Milroy. Yes!
he selects ME as the _confidante_ of his devoted attachment to
the major's daughter! 'It's so nice to talk to a woman about it!'
That is all the apology he has thought it necessary to make for
appealing to my sympathies--_my_ sympathies!--on the subject
of 'his darling Neelie,' fifty times a day. He is evidently
persuaded (if he thinks about it at all) that I have forgotten,
as completely as he has forgotten, all that once passed between
us when I was first at Thorpe Ambrose. Such an utter want of
the commonest delicacy and the commonest tact, in a creature
who is, to all appearance, possessed of a skin, and not a hide,
and who does, unless my ears deceive me, talk, and not bray,
is really quite incredible when one comes to think of it. But
it is, for all that, quite true. He asked me--he actually asked
me, last night--how many hundreds a year the wife of a rich man
could spend on her dress. 'Don't put it too low,' the idiot
added, with his intolerable grin.
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