“And who is angry, pray, Mr. Ormond? What put it in your head that I was doing you the honour to be angry with you?”
“The cream! the cream!” cried Miss O’Faley.
A sudden motion, we must not say an angry motion of Dora’s elbow, had at this moment overset the cream ewer; but Harry set it up again, before its contents poured on her new riding-habit.
“Thank you,” said she, “thank you; but,” added she, changing the places of the cream ewer and cups and saucers before her, “I’d rather manage my own affairs my own way, if you’d let me, Mr. Ormond—if you’d leave me—I can take care of myself my own way.”
“I beg your pardon for saving your habit from destruction, for that is the only cause of offence that I am conscious of having given. But I leave you to your own way, as I am ordered,” said he, rising from the breakfast table.
“Sparring! sparring again, you two!” said Dora’s father: “but, Dora, I wonder whether you and White Connal were sparring that way when you met.”
“Time enough for that, sir, after marriage,” said Dora.
Our hero, who had stood leaning on the back of his chair, fearing that he had been too abrupt in what he had said, cast a lingering look at Dora, as her father spoke about White Connal, and as she replied; but there was something so unfeminine, so unamiable, so decided and bold, he thought, in the tone of her voice, as she pronounced the word marriage, that he then, without reluctance, and with a feeling of disgust, quitted the room, and left her “to manage her own affairs, and to take her own way.”