“Pen!” said Sir Richard, turning awfully upon his supposed cousin. “Is it possible that you can have made serious advances towards Miss Daubenay?”
“I never offered marriage,” said Pen, hanging her head.
The Major seemed to be in danger of suffering an apoplexy. Before he could recover the power of speech, Sir Richard had intervened. Upon the Major’s bemused ears fell a description of Pen’s shameless precocity that caused the object of it to turn away hastily to hide her laughter. According to Sir Richard’s malicious tongue, Bath was strewn with her innocent victims. When Sir Richard let fall the information that this youthful moral leper was without means or expectations, the Major found enough breath to declare that the whelp ought to be horsewhipped.
“Precisely my own view,” bowed Sir Richard.
“Upon my word, I had not dreamed of such a thing! Penniless, you say?”
“Little better than a pauper,” said Sir Richard.
“Good Gad, what an escape!” gasped the Major. “I do not know what to say! I am aghast!”
“Alas!” said Sir Richard, “his father was just such another! The same disarming air of innocence hid a wolfish heart.”
“You appal me!” declared the Major. “Yet he looks a mere boy!”
Pen, feeling that it was time she bore a part in the scene, said with an air of innocence which horrified the Major: “But if Lydia says I offered marriage, it is not true. It was all mere trifling. I do not wish to be married.”