'Inhuman! you make me unhappy past thought!'
'Indeed I am inexpressibly concerned; but the whole affair....'
'You shock, you annihilate me, you injure me in the tenderest point!'
Camilla now, amazed, cried 'what is it you mean, sir?'
'By investing me, fair barbarian, with the temerity of forming any claim that can call for repulse!'
Utterly confounded by so unexpected a disclaiming of all design, she again, though from far different sensations, cast up her eyes and hands. And is it, she thought, for a trifler such as this, so unmeaning, so unfeeling, I have risked my whole of hope and happiness?
She said, however, no more; for what more could be said? She coloured, past him, and hastily quitting the garden, told the footman to apologise to Mrs. Arlbery for her sudden departure, by informing her that a near relation was just arrived from abroad; and then got into the carriage and drove back to Cleves. Sir Sedley followed carelessly, yet without aiming at overtaking her, and intreated, negligently, to be heard, yet said nothing which required the smallest answer.
Piqued completely, and mortified to the quick, by the conviction which now broke in upon him of the superior ascendance of Mandlebert, he could not brook to have been thought in earnest when he saw he should not have been accepted, nor pardon his own vanity the affront it had brought upon his pride. He sung aloud an opera air till the carriage of Sir Hugh was out of sight, and then drove his phaeton to Clarendel-Place, where he instantly ordered his post-chaise, and in less than an hour, set off on a tour to the Hebrides.