"It is not to Mr. Dean, is it?"
"To Mr. Dean," she repeated. "What should I write to Mr. Dean for? It is to no one connected with Mr. Dean or you."
"Well, lay it aside for a few minutes and tell me in what way we have annoyed you."
"You have annoyed me by want of straightforwardness. Mr. Dean has annoyed me by his insolence, unintentional though I believe it to have been. But that only makes the sting the sharper. Who is he that his future wife should be taken away from Homewood the moment misfortune threatens it? What is Antonia that she should be treated as though she were one of the blood royal?"
"Mr. Dean is one of the most intolerable bores I ever met," replied Rupert calmly. "And Antonia is, in my opinion, an extremely calculating and commonplace young person. But Mr. Dean has money and his prejudices, and I am sure you do not wish to prevent Antonia marrying the only rich man who is ever likely to make her an offer.
"Now Mr. Dean regards a man who fails to meet his engagements as a little lower than a felon. I believe he would quite as soon ask a ticket-of-leave fellow to Elm Park as a merchant whose affairs are embarrassed, and there is no use in trying to argue him out of his notions. We must take people as they are, Dolly."
"Yes, if it is necessary to take them at all," she agreed.
"It is very necessary for me," he said. "I cannot afford to quarrel with Mr. Dean, or to have Antonia thrown on my hands, as she would be if he refused to marry her."
"He will not refuse," observed Dolly. "He has thought that subject over, and decided it is too late to draw back now."
"How do you know?" asked Rupert in amazement.