The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
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page 41 of 1055 (03%)
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'There may be ten thousand other objections, Mr Lopez, but I
really think that the one is enough. Of course I know nothing of my daughter's feelings. I should imagine that the matter is as strange to her as it is to me. But I cannot give you anything like encouragement. If I am ever to have a son-in-law, I should wish to have an English son-in-law. I do not even know what your profession is.' 'I am engaged in foreign loans.' 'Very precarious I should think. A sort of gambling, isn't it?' 'It is the business by which many of the greatest mercantile houses in the city have been made.' 'I dare say;--I dare say;--and by which they come to ruin. I have the greatest respect in the world for mercantile enterprise, and I have had as much to do as most men with mercantile questions. But I ain't sure that I wish to marry my daughter in the City. Of course it's all prejudice. I won't deny that on general subjects I can give as much latitude as any man; but when one's own heart is attacked--' 'Surely such a position as mine, Mr Wharton, is no attack!' 'In my sense it is. When a man proposes to assault and invade the very kernel of another man's heart, to share with him, and indeed to take from him, the very dearest of his possessions, to become part and parcel with him either for infinite good or infinite evil, then a man has a right to guard even his |
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