“Have you the injustice to say that I have insulted Lady Matilda?”
“To speak of her at all, is in you an insult. But you have done more—you have dared to visit her—to force into her presence and shock her with your offers of services which she scorns; and with your compassion, which she is above.”
“Did she complain to you?”
“She or her friend did.”
“I rather suppose, Mr. Sandford, that you have bribed some of the servants to reveal this.”
“The suspicion becomes Lord Elmwood’s heir.”
“It becomes the man, who lives in a house with you.”
“I thank you, Mr. Rushbrook, for what has passed this day—it has taken a weight off my mind. I thought my disinclination to you, might perhaps arise from prejudice—this conversation has relieved me from those fears, and—I thank you.” Saying this he calmly walked out of the room, and left Rushbrook to reflect on what he had been doing.
Heated with the wine he had drank (and which Sandford, engaged on his book, had not observed) no sooner was he alone, than he became by degrees cool and repentant. “What had he done?” was the first question to himself—“He had offended Sandford.”—The man, whom reason as well as prudence had ever taught him to respect, and even to revere. He had grossly offended the firm friend of Lady Matilda, by the unreserved and wanton use of her name. All the retorts he had uttered came now to his memory; with a total forgetfulness of all that Sandford had said to provoke them.
He once thought to follow him and beg his pardon; but the contempt with which he had been treated, more than all the anger, with-held him.