'Insulted you?' repeated he. 'Egad, you surprise me!'
The ejaculation savoured of 'the old man,' to borrow his scriptural phrase, more than anything I had heard from him before.
'How?' he continued; 'how has Dudley insulted you, my dear child? Come, you're excited; sit down; take time, and tell me all about it. I did not know that Dudley was here.'
'I—he—it is an insult. He knew very well—he must know I dislike him; and he presumed to make a proposal of marriage to me.'
'O—o—oh!' exclaimed my uncle, with a prolonged intonation which plainly said, Is that the mighty matter?
He looked at me as he leaned back with the same steady curiosity, this time smiling, which somehow frightened me, and his countenance looked to me wicked, like the face of a witch, with a guilt I could not understand.
'And that is the amount of your complaint. He made you a formal proposal of marriage!'
'Yes; he proposed for me.'
As I cooled, I began to feel just a very little disconcerted, and a suspicion was troubling me that possibly an indifferent person might think that, having no more to complain of, my language was perhaps a little exaggerated, and my demeanour a little too tempestuous.