"Well!" she said, and leaned back in her chair in a fit of musing.
"Is that all you are going to say, Aunty?" I ventured to ask at last.
"No, I have one more remark to add," she said, "and it is this: I don't know which of you has behaved most ridiculously. It would relieve me to give you each a good shaking."
"I think Dr. Elliot has behaved ridiculously," I said, "and he has made me most unhappy."
"Unhappy!" she repeated. "I don't wonder you are unhappy. You have pained and wounded one of the noblest men that walks the earth."
"It is not my fault. I never tried to make him like me."
"Yes, you did. You were perfectly bewitching whenever he came here.
No mortal man could help being fascinated."
I knew this was not true, and bitterly resented Aunty's injustice.
"If I wanted to 'fascinate' or 'bewitch' a man," I cried, "I should not choose one old enough to be my father, nor one who was as uninteresting, awkward and stiff as Dr. Elliott. Besides, how should I know he was not married? If I thought anything about it at all, I certainly thought of him as a middle-aged man, settled down with a wife, long ago.
"In the first place he is not old, or even middle aged. He is not more than twenty-seven or eight. As to his being uninteresting, perhaps he is to you, who don't know him. And if he were a married man, what business had he to come here to see as he has done?"