justice.

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, life is so unkind, and to be always wise simply
deadly! A few memories to treasure are all the good we finally have of
our miserable days, and to catch at a moment of gold without care that
it will have to be paid for is the only way to have in our hands in all
our lives anything but copper and lead; yes, dull lead, common copper."
He covered his face and pressed his eyes, in a way he had when the world
seemed too hopeless and baffling; then as suddenly straightened up,
remarking more quietly, "The Fosses are too wise."

"They have my sympathy, I must say, Mr. Fane," Mrs. Hawthorne hurriedly
defended herself against being moved. "I should be just as much afraid
as they to have my daughter marry a foreigner."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, you ought to be afraid to have your daughter marry
anybody." He gathered heat again and vehemence. "As regards Italians, we
are all one mass of superstitions. We are always comparing our best with
their bad. As a matter of truth, our best and their best and the best
the world over are one as good as the other, and our worst can't be
exceeded by anything Italy can show. If you make the difficulty that we
are different, our point of view different, I object that Brenda's is
not so different. The international marriages that turn out well make no
noise, but there are plenty of them. I have seen any number in the
ordinary middle classes. No, parents are twice as old as their children;
that is the trouble and always will be. The older people by prudence
secure a certain thing, but it's not the thing youth wanted. The older
see a certain thing as preferable, because they are old; but the young
were right for themselves, for a time, at least, until they, too, grew
old and saw a long peace and comfort as superior to a brief love and
rapture. Brenda is not shallow or changeable; it may be her one chance
of happiness that her parents in their anxious affection are trying to
remove her from, and which she will cling to with every invisible fiber
of her being until she conquers, or turns into a dismal old maid. Brenda
is not like other girls. Love is serious to her. She never played with
it as Leslie has always done, and as American girls do, yes, in
Massachusetts and Virginia alike. She is an earnest, simple, sincere,
constant nature, very much, in fact, like him."

"You seem to like him. Is he such a fine man really?"

"I don't know a finer, in his way."

"Good looking?"