“What d' ye think?” said Dalton, jocularly, as he seated himself in a comfortable chair.
“What do I think?” repeated he, twice or thrice over. “Egad, I don't know what to think! I only know what to hope, and wish it may have been!”
“And what's that?” said Dalton, with a look of almost sternness, for he was not ignorant of the doctor's sentiments on the subject.
“A refusal, of course,” said Grounsell, who never yet was deterred by a look, a sign, or an innuendo, from any expression of his sentiments.
“And why so, sir?” rejoined Dalton, warmly.
“On every ground in the world: What has your fine, generous-hearted, dear child in common with that vile world of envy, malice, and all wickedness you 'd throw her amongst? What similarity in thought, feeling, or instinct between her and that artificial class with whom you would associate her, with their false honor, false principle, and false delicacy nothing real and substantial about them but their wickedness? If you were a silly woman, like the mother in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' I could forgive you; but a man a hardened, worldly man, that has tasted poverty, and knows the rubs of life. I 've no patience with you, d—n me if I have!”
“A little more of this, and I 'll have none with you,” said Dalton, as he clenched his fist, and struck his knee a hard blow. “You presume to talk of us as people whose station was always what our present means imply; but I 'd have you to know that we 've better blood in our veins—”
“Devil take your blood! you've made me spill mine again,” cried Grounsell, as he sliced a piece off his chin, and threw down the razor in a torrent of anger, while Dalton grinned a look of malicious satisfaction. “Could n't your good blood have kept you above anything like dependence?”
Dalton sprang to his feet, and clutching the chair, raised it in the air; but as suddenly dashed it on the floor again, without speaking.
“Go on,” cried Grounsell, daring him. “I'd rather you 'd break my skull than that dear girl's heart; and that 's what you 're bent on. Ay, break her heart! no less. You can't terrify me, man, by those angry looks. You can't wound me, either, by retaliating, and calling me a dependant. I know I am such. I know well all the ignominy, all the shame; but I know, too, all the misery of the position. But, mark me, the disgrace and the sorrow end where they begin, with myself alone. I have none to blush for me; I stand alone in the world, a poor, scathed, sapless, leafless trunk. But it is not so with you. Come, come, Dalton, you fancy that you know something of life because you have passed so many years of it among your equals and neighbors in your own 'country; but you know nothing absolutely nothing of the world as it exists here.”