“And gone back there too,” added Withering.
“I wish to Heaven he had taken me with him!” sighed Peter, drearily.
“I think in this case, Miss Barrington,” said Withering, with a well-affected gravity, “we had better withdraw a juror, and accept a nonsuit.”
“I have done with it altogether,” said she, gathering up her worsted and her needles, and preparing to leave the room.
“My dear Dinah,” said Barrington, entreatingly, “imagine a man as wanting in tact as I am,—and as timid, too, about giving casual offence,—conducting such an inquiry as you committed to my hands. Fancy how, at every attempt to obtain information, his own boldness, I might call it rudeness, stared him in the face, till at last, rather than push his investigations, he grew puzzled how to apologize for his prying curiosity.”
“Brother, brother, this is too bad! It had been better to have thought more of your granddaughter's fate and less of your own feelings.” And with this she flounced out of the room, upsetting a spider-table, and a case of stuffed birds that stood on it, as she passed.
“I don't doubt but she 's right, Tom,” said Peter, when the door closed.
“Did he not tell you who he was, and what his fortune? Did you really learn nothing from him?”