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 look round for admiration: he had said his say, and was silent.

"Ma foi! mon ami," observed Mr. Moore to Yorke; "ce sont vraiment des enfants terribles, que les vôtres!"

Rose, who had been listening attentively to Mark's speech, replied to him:—

"There are different kinds of thoughts, ideas, and notions," said she, "good and bad: sentimental must refer to the bad, or Miss Helstone must have taken it in that sense, for she was not blaming Mr. Moore; she was defending him."

"That's my kind little advocate!" said Moore, taking Rose's hand.

"She was defending him," repeated Rose, "as I should have done had I been in her place, for the other ladies seemed to speak spitefully."

"Ladies always do speak spitefully," observed Martin; "it is the nature of womenites to be spiteful."

Matthew now, for the first time, opened his lips:—

"What a fool Martin is, to be always gabbling about what he does not understand."

"It is my privilege, as a freeman, to gabble on whatever subject I like," responded Martin.

"You use it, or rather abuse it, to such an extent," rejoined the elder brother, "that you prove you ought to have been a slave."