"Offended a fiddlestick! Offence indeed! An offer from an honest man, with her friends' approval, and a fortune at her back, as though she had been born with a gold spoon in her mouth! And she tells me that she can't, and won't, and wouldn't, and shouldn't, as though I were asking her to walk the streets. I declare I don't know what has come to the young women;—or what it is they want. One would have thought that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."
"But what is the reason, Miss Stanbury?"
"Oh, reason! You don't suppose people give reasons in these days. What reason have they when they dress themselves up with bandboxes on their sconces? Just simply the old reason—'I do not like thee, Dr. Fell;—why I cannot tell.'"
"May I not see her myself, Miss Stanbury?"
"I can't make her come down-stairs to you. I've been at her the whole morning, Mr. Gibson. Ever since daylight, pretty nearly. She came into my room before I was up, and told me she had made up her mind. I've coaxed, and scolded, and threatened, and cried;—but if she'd been a milestone it couldn't have been of less use. I told her she might go back to Nuncombe, and she just went off to pack up."
"But she's not to go?"
"How can I say what such a young woman will do? I'm never allowed a way of my own for a moment. There's Brooke Burgess been scolding me at that rate I didn't know whether I stood on my head or my heels. And I don't know now."
Then there was a pause, while Mr. Gibson was endeavouring to decide what would now be his best course of action. "Don't you think she'll ever come round, Miss Stanbury?"
"I don't think she'll ever come any way that anybody wants her to come, Mr. Gibson."
"I didn't think she was at all like that," said Mr. Gibson, almost in tears.