“Indeed—indeed, Ranty, I couldn’t help it! He talked to me, and I had to answer him, and you never came near me all the time,” said Erminie with tears of distress in her gentle blue eyes.
“No; the thumb-screws of the Holy Office wouldn’t have got a word out of me!” said Ranty, fiercely. “Do you think I was going to thrust myself forward where I wasn’t wanted? No, Lady Erminie De Courcy; though you may be above me in rank and wealth, I can have as much pride as you can yet; and if you think fit to cut my acquaintance, you are perfectly welcome to do it. I am going away this afternoon, and I am not likely to trouble you any more; but first I’ll punch the head of that sweet seraph, the Honorable Augustus—hanged if I don’t! Lady Erminie, good-by! I’m off for a voyage to Constantinople; and if you hear that the sultan has had me bow-strung, or bastinadoed, or pitched into the Bosphorus, or that I have committed suicide, or anything, I hope you’ll drop a tear to the memory of the little boy in roundabout-jackets who used to go sailing and making love with you at old Judestown.”
Here Ranty dropped his voice to the deeply-pathetic, and held out his hand mournfully to Erminie. But that young lady’s hands were up before her face, and she seemed in a fair way to comply with his request to drop a tear to his memory; for she was sobbing away convulsively.
“There, now! I’ve went and set you a-crying!” exclaimed Ranty, in a tone, or rather howl, of mingled remorse and distraction. “That’s always the way I go and put my foot in whatever I go to do! I am a brute! a crocodile! a sea-serpent! a monster! an unmitigated bear! and I deserve a sound flogging for speaking to you as I did. Erminie! dear Erminie! dearest Erminie! forgive me, like a good girl. It was all owing to that hairy-faced fool, Ahringfeldt—I swear it was! I was jealous of him! madly jealous! the effeminate little cream-candy puppy! Dear Erminie, forgive me! Dearest Erminie, look up and say I am forgiven, or I will go to the nearest apothecary’s, and put an end to my miserable existence with a gallon or two of Prussic acid. Dear, dearest, darling Erminie! only say you forgive me!” pleaded Ranty, kneeling before her, and gently withdrawing her hands from before her.
Erminie looked up imploringly through her tears.
“Oh, Ranty! how can you say such dreadful things? Oh, you frighten me to death! Promise me you will not kill yourself; it is so wicked, you know!”
“Beside being disagreeable to be sat on by a coroner and a dozen asses of jurymen. Well, I won’t, if you will promise me one thing.”
“Oh, Ranty! I will promise anything if you will not do it.”
“Will you, though? Oh, Erminie! you’re a nice young woman! Well, I want you to be my dear, little blue-eyed wife. Now, then, say yes.”
But Erminie, with a bright blush and a little surprised scream, threw up her hands and covered her face.