"I knew it would be so."
"You knew nothing of the kind, mamma, and your saying so is simply an untruth. It was you who put me up to it."
"Arabella, that is false."
"It wasn't you, I suppose, who made me throw over Mr. Morton and Bragton."
"Certainly not."
"That is so like you, mamma. There isn't a single thing that you do or say that you don't deny afterwards." These little compliments were so usual among them that at the present moment they excited no great danger. "There's his letter. I suppose you had better read it." And she chucked the document to her mother.
"It is very decided," said Lady Augustus.
"It is the falsest, the most impudent, and the most scandalous letter that a man ever wrote to a woman. I could horsewhip him for it myself if I could get near him."
"Is it all over, Arabella?"
"All over! What questions you do ask, mamma! No. It is not all over. I'll stick to him like a leech. He proposed to me as plainly as any man ever did to any woman. I don't care what people may say or think. He hasn't heard the last of me; and so he'll find." And thus in her passion she made up her mind that she would not yet abandon the hunt.