"Certainly I have. I have asked her to be my wife."
"Come, Mr. Thwaite, do not palter with me."
"Palter with you! Who dares to say that I palter? I have never paltered. Paltering is—lying, as I take it. Let the Countess be my enemy. I have not said that she should not be so. She might have answered my letter, I think, when the old man died. In our rank of life we should have done so. It may be different with lords and titled ladies. Let it pass, however. I did not mean to make any complaint. I came here because you sent for me."
"Yes;—I did send for you," said the Serjeant, wishing with all his heart that he had never been persuaded to take a step which imposed upon him so great a difficulty. "I did send for you. Lady Anna Lovel has expressed a wish to see you, before she leaves London."
"I will wait upon Lady Anna Lovel."
"I need hardly tell you that her wish has been opposed by her friends."
"No doubt it was."
"But she has said with so much earnestness that she cannot consider herself to be absolved from the promise which she made to you when she was a child—"
"She was no child when she made it."
"It does not signify. She cannot be absolved from the promise which I suppose she did make—"