No reply.
"You do not. How can you? She was too much your inferior. She never sent one of her lovers with a letter to the other to stop his flight. Well, you may eclipse Célimène; but permit me to remind you that I am George Neville, and not Georges Dandin."
Miss Peyton rose from her seat with eyes that literally flashed fire, and, the horrible truth must be told, her first wild impulse was to reply to all this Molière with one cut of her little riding-whip: but she had a swift mind, and two reflections entered it together: first that this would be unlike a gentlewoman; secondly, that if she whipped Mr. Neville, however slightly, he would not lend her his piebald horse: so she took stronger measures; she just sank down again and faltered, "I do not understand these bitter words: I have no lover at all: I never will have one again. But it is hard to think I cannot make a friend, nor keep a friend." And so lifted up her hands and began to cry piteously.
Then the stout George was taken aback, and made to think himself a ruffian.
"Nay, do not weep so, Mistress Kate," said he hurriedly. "Come, take courage. I am not jealous of Mr. Gaunt; a man that hath been two years dangling after you, and could not win you. I look but to my own self-respect in the matter. I know your sex better than you know yourselves: were I to carry that letter you would thank me now, but by and by despise me; now as I mean you to be my wife, I will not risk your contempt. 'Why not take my horse, put who you like on him, and so convey the letter to Mr. Gaunt?"
Now this was all the fair mourner wanted; so she said, "No, no, she would not be beholden to him for anything; he had spoken harshly to her, and misjudged her cruelly, cruelly: oh! oh! oh!"
Then he implored her to grant him this small favor: then she cleared up and said, well, sooner than bear malice, she would. He thanked her for granting him that favor. She went off with the letter, saying, "I will be back anon." But, once she got clear, she opened the door again, and peeped in at him gaily, and said she, "Why not ask me who wrote the letter before you compared me to that French coquette?" And with this made him an arch curtsy, and tripped away.
Mr. George Neville opened his eyes with astonishment. This arch question, and Kate's manner of putting it, convinced him the obnoxious missive was not a love-letter at all. He was sorry now, and vexed with himself for having called her a coquette, and made her cry. After all, what was the mighty favor she had asked of him? to carry a sealed letter from somebody or other to a person who, to be sure, had been her lover, but was so no longer. A simple act of charity and civility, and he had refused it in injurious terms.
He was glad he had lent his horse, and almost sorry he had not taken the letter himself.
To these chivalrous self-reproaches succeeded an uneasy feeling that perhaps the lady might retaliate somehow. It struck him, on reflection, that the arch query she had let fly at him was accompanied with a certain sparkle of the laughing eye, such as ere now had, in his experience, preceded a stroke of the feminine claw.