'Oh, Dudley, Dudley!—oh, Dudley, could you? Oh, Dudley, your own poor Sal! You could not—you would not—your lawful wife!'
This and a good deal more, with cheeks that streamed like a window-pane in a thunder-shower, spoke Sarah Matilda with all her oratory, working his arm, which she clung to, up and down all the time, like the handle of a pump. But Dudley was, manifestly, confounded and dumbfoundered. He stood for a long time gaping at his father, and stole just one sheepish glance at me; and, with red face and forehead, looked down at his boots, and then again at his father, who remained just in the attitude I have described, and with the same forbidding and dreary intensity in his strange face.
Like a quarrelsome man worried in his sleep by a noise, Dudley suddenly woke up, as it were, with a start, in a half-suppressed exasperation, and shook her off with a jerk and a muttered curse, as she whisked involuntarily into a chair, with more violence than could have been pleasant.
'Judging by your looks and demeanour, sir, I can almost anticipate your answers,' said my uncle, addressing him suddenly. 'Will you be good enough—pray, madame (parenthetically to our visitor), command yourself for a few moments. Is this young person the daughter of a Mr. Mangles, and is her name Sarah Matilda?'
'I dessay,' answered Dudley, hurriedly.
'Is she your wife?'
'Is she my wife?' repeated Dudley, ill at ease.
'Yes, sir; it is a plain question.'
All this time Sarah Matilda was perpetually breaking into talk, and with difficulty silenced by my uncle.