'Certainly there has.'

'A young man should be very chary about how he speaks to another
man, to a stranger, about his sister. A sister's name should be
too sacred for club talk.'

'Club talk! Good heavens, sir, you don't think that I have
spoken of Emily in that way? There isn't a man in London who has
a higher respect for his sister than I have for mine. This man,
by no means in a light way, but with all seriousness, has told me
that he was attached to Emily; and I believing him to be a
gentleman and well to do in this world, have referred him to you.
Can that have been wrong?'

'I don't know how he's "to do", as you call it. I haven't asked,
and I don't mean to ask. But I doubt his being a gentleman. He
is not an English gentleman. What was his father?'

'I haven't the least idea.'

'Or his mother?'

'He has never mentioned her to me.'

'Nor his family; nor anything of their antecedents? He is a man
fallen out of the moon. All that is nothing to us as passing
acquaintances. Between men such ignorance should I think bar
absolute intimacy;--but that may be a matter of taste. But it
should be held to be utterly antagonistic to any such alliance as
that of marriage. He seems to be a friend of yours. You had