His Grace — page 86: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 | HIS GRACE. had better make up your mind to that. However, her choice is certain to be a wise one; and after she has disposed of you, she means to take Norain hand. She was telling me so while you were skating, and she most kindly offered to chaperon a humble nobody through the next London season.” Hurstbourne is the most hospitable of mankind ; yet he did not second his mother’s invitation with the alacrity which I should have expected of him. On the contrary, he frowned and looked quite annoyed. “Oh, I don’t think that would be a good plan,” said he. ‘“ Of course you are the best judge of the sort of life that you would wish your sister to lead; but I must say that, if I had a sister, I wouldn’t throw her among those London women unless I was obliged. You don’t know what they are—I doubt whether any fellow can know without being a duke or a very rich man.” He proceeded to tell me what they were, supporting his assertions by sundry anecdotes which, I own, sur- prised me, and wound up by declaring emphatically that it would be a downright sin to launch an innocent, sim- ple girl like my sister upon such turbid waters. “What in the world do you think that she would gain by it?” he inquired. “Do you imagine that she would come out of it any better or happier than she is? Do you imagine that she would learn anything more than she already knows, except a few things which you can’t wish her to know?” Well, I supposed that she might gain what they all hope to gain ; thatis to say, a husband. But I refrained from putting the case so coarsely to this young moralist, and after all, it was a great deal more likely than Eomichboo “S (E(0) m