She walked rapidly to the door, which she threw wide open with a gesture of invitation to him to go out. Mr. Williams instantly got behind an armchair.
“No, no, I know you can throw me out if you want to, but just let me stay and explain. Look what a shrimp I am compared with you. You can’t mind me,” pleaded he.
The sight of the little sandy man clinging to the back of the armchair, and “dodging” any movement of hers which he imagined to be threatening, caused Olivia’s just indignation to merge into a strong inclination to laugh. She remained standing by the door, drawn up to her full height, and said, very drily—
“I suppose it is of no use to talk to you about the feelings of a gentleman. But perhaps you can understand this: I consider you an odious person, and I wish you to go.”
“That’s just the impression I wish to stay and remove,” said Mr. Williams, blandly.
“You won’t remove it by staying,” said Miss Denison.
“As for the feelings of a gentleman,” pursued he, ignoring her interpolation, “of course you are quite right. I haven’t got them; I don’t know what they’re like, and I don’t want to. I’m a hopeless little cad, if you like, though nobody but you and the parson would dare to call me so, because I’m coming in to a hundred and eighty thousand pounds. Doesn’t it make your mouth water—£180,000? It does make a difference, don’t it, say what you like, in the way you look at a fellow?”
“It does,” said Miss Denison. “It makes one shudder to think of so much money being in the hands of a person who is not competent to make a right use of half a crown.”
“Why, I never thought of it in that light,” said the gentleman, leaning over the back of the armchair, and caressing his chin musingly. “But, look here, I may marry, and she will think she knows how to make a right use of it, I’ll warrant.”
This speech he accompanied by a look which was meant to be full of arch meaning. Miss Denison took no notice either of speech or look.