"I don't want to know your heart."
"You might listen to a man, at any rate."
"I don't want to listen. It can't do any good. I only want you to leave me alone, and go away."
"I don't know what you take me for," said Mr. Spooner, beginning to wax angry.
"I haven't taken you for anything at all. This is very disagreeable and very foolish. A lady has a right to know her own mind, and she has a right not to be persecuted." She would have referred to Lord Chiltern's letter had not all the hopes of her heart been so terribly crushed since that letter had been written. In it he had openly declared that she was already engaged to be married to Mr. Maule, thinking that he would thus put an end to Mr. Spooner's little adventure. But since the writing of Lord Chiltern's letter that unfortunate reference had been made to Boulogne, and every particle of her happiness had been destroyed. She was a miserable, blighted young woman, who had quarrelled irretrievably with her lover, feeling greatly angry with herself because she had made the quarrel, and yet conscious that her own self-respect had demanded the quarrel. She was full of regret, declaring to herself from morning to night that, in spite of all his manifest wickedness in having talked of Boulogne, she never could care at all for any other man. And now there was this aggravation to her misery,—this horrid suitor, who disgraced her by making those around her suppose it to be possible that she should ever accept him; who had probably heard of her quarrel, and had been mean enough to suppose that therefore there might be a chance for himself! She did despise him, and wanted him to understand that she despised him.
"I believe I am in a condition to offer my hand and fortune to any young lady without impropriety," said Mr. Spooner.
"I don't know anything about your condition."
"But I will tell you everything."
"I don't want to know anything about it."
"I have an estate of—"