“Very strong, I think. I can tell you I hesitated.”
“Now you see how you have mistaken your own feelings.”
Lucy hung her head. “Oh uncle, you call me simple—and look at you! fancy not seeing why I agreed to go—dans cette galere. It was that Mr. Talboys might declare himself, and so I might get rid of him forever. I saw that if I could not bring him to the point, he would dangle about me for years, and perhaps, at last, succeed in irritating me to rudeness. But now, of course, I shall stay on shore with my uncle to-morrow. Qu'irais je faire dana cette galere? you have done it all for me. Oh, my dear, dear uncle, I am so grateful to you!”
She showed symptoms of caressing Mr. Fountain, but he recoiled from her angrily. “Viper! but no, this is not you. There is a deeper hand than you in all this. This is that Mrs. Bazalgette's doings.”
“No, indeed, uncle.”
“Give me a proof it is not.”
“With pleasure; any proof that is in my power.”
“Then promise me not to marry Mr. Hardie.”
“My dear uncle, Mr. Hardie has never asked me.”
“But he will.”