He was handsome with vigor, nobility and devotion while he uttered these words, although he put into them all the simplicity which the truest respect commands.
But it was decreed that everything he should say and do was to displease, offend and drive Andrea to make insulting retorts, as though each of his offers were an outrage and his supplications provocation.
She meant to rise to suit an action most harsh to words most stern; but a nervous shiver kept her in her seat. She thought, besides, that she would be more likely to be seen if erect, and she did not wish to be remarked talking with a Gilbert! She kept her seat, but she determined once for all to crush this tormenting little insect under foot.
“I thought I had already told you that you dreadfully displease me; your voice irritates me, and your Philosophical nonsense is repugnant to me. Why then, as I told you this much, are you obstinate in speaking to me?”
“Lady, no woman should be irritated by sympathy being expressed for her.” He was pale but constrained. “An honest man is the peer of any human creature, and perchance I, whom you so persistently ill-treat, deserve the sympathy which I regret you do not show for me.”
“Sympathy,” repeated Andrea at this reiteration of the word, fastening her eyes widely open with impertinence on him, “sympathy from me towards you? In truth, I have made a mistake about you. I took you for a pert fellow and you are a mad one.”
“I am neither pert nor mad,” returned the low-born lover, with an apparent calm which was costly to the pride we know he felt. “No, for nature made me your equal and chance made you my debtor.”
“Chance again, eh?” sneered the baron’s daughter.
“I ought to say, Providence. I should never have mentioned it but your insults bring it up in my mind.”
“Your debtor, I think you say—why do you say that?”