“Deary me, don’t be so cross?” replied his aunt, his very impatience frustrating his object. “You frighten me, Charles. I’m sure I’ve done nothing to deserve this—”
“For heaven’s sake,” cried her nephew, losing control of himself, “cut this short, and tell me how long they’ve been gone, and what road they took.”
Aylesford at last extracted the unwelcome intelligence that Kate and his rival had been absent since eight o’clock.
“Time enough to make a dozen proposals,” muttered he, “and talk down the scruples of twenty heiresses, especially when a beggar of an officer is the suitor, who has had the good luck to help her off from a wreck. But I’ll put a stop to the fellow’s insolent pretensions. If the mischief be not done already, I’ll take good care he gets no more such opportunities; and if he has practiced on my cousin’s susceptibility, of whom I’m the natural protector, as being her nearest male relative, I’ll run him through.”
With these words he stepped to the window, ordered a horse to be saddled, and having ascertained the direction in which the equestrians had ridden, set off in search of them. Fortune conducted him immediately to them, as we have already seen.
CHAPTER XXII.
AYLESFORD AND KATE
Helen I love thee; by my life I do:
I swear by that which I will love for thee,
To prove him false that says I love thee not. —Shakespeare.
I cannot love him,
He might have took his answer long ago. —Shakespeare.
I’ll have my bond, I will not hear thee speak.
I’ll have my bond. —Shakespeare.
Though Kate could not think, without aversion, of ratifying the family contract to marry her cousin, yet she commiserated his disappointment, and was consequently more tender to his feelings than she would otherwise have been.