“False!” she exclaimed, quite taken aback.
“Certainly. It has led you to exaggerate the consequences of your father’s death.”
“You cannot know the circumstances that led to it,”she said in a low voice.
“On the contrary. But I have yet to learn that you were in any way concerned in them.”
“Perhaps you are right, and I have allowed myself to be too much mortified. My first experience of how the world must look upon our affairs was an unhappy one. You must know that I was betrothed to a certain gentleman at the time of my father’s death who—who was excessively relieved to be released from his obligations.” She lifted her chin, adding, “Not that I cared a button for that, I assure you!”
He remained entirely unmoved. “How should you, indeed?”
She would have spurned any expression of pity, but she felt irrationally annoyed by this unfeeling response, and said rather sharply, “Well, it is no very pleasant thing to be jilted, after all!”
“Very true, but the knowledge that you were well rid of a bad bargain must soon have allayed your chagrin, I imagine.”
A reluctant twinkle came into her eye. “I have not the most distant guess, my lord, why the extreme good sense of your remarks should put me out of charity with you, but so it is!” she said. “You will do well to conduct me to your decent inn before I am provoked into answering you in a style quite unsuited to our different degrees!”
He smiled. “Why, I am sorry if I have vexed you, Miss Rochdale. But I cannot conceive that expressions of sympathy on my part could in any way benefit you, or, in fact, be acceptable to you.”