"Dear me! how amazingly condescending! So, as long as you are permitted to have your own way, we may have the honour of suggesting plans for your approbation whenever we please. How astonishingly kind! I am afraid we shall never be able to show ourselves properly grateful, Sir Ambrose."
"This irony, my lord," said Edric, firmly, "is unworthy both of yourself and us. I will allow that you and my father have both reason to be displeased with our conduct, as it has disappointed hopes which you have long cherished; but permit me to say, that if you had expressed your displeasure in serious, manly, and open terms as he did, it would have been much more befitting your high rank and the importance of the subject, than the taunting irony you have thought proper to make use of."
"Schooled too! by St. Wellington!" exclaimed the duke. "Upon my word, these are fine times, when a man of my age and rank is to be lectured by a beardless stripling!"
"I did not mean to offend your grace," said Edric; "and I am sorry the violence of my feelings compelled me to use language unbefitting my youth, and disrespectful to an old and valued friend of my father."
"Say no more, young man," replied the duke, "apologies only double an offence. If such are your sentiments, I would rather you declared than concealed them, as I think even insolence preferable to hypocrisy. However, after what has passed, I can never meet you amicably again, and I shall even avoid entering the house of my friend, Sir Ambrose, whilst you remain in it." This was spoken with dignity, and a majestic firmness of tone. The duke's voice, however, trembled a little as he continued—"I shall be sorry to lose the society of my old friend, and I should be equally sorry to induce him to desert you, but I cannot willingly expose myself to insult; and I must accordingly decline all farther intercourse with your family."
"Decline all farther intercourse with our family!" exclaimed Sir Ambrose. "This from you, duke! And Edmund! my darling Edmund! is he to suffer for the faults of his brother?"
"How do you know that the loss of my daughter would make him suffer?" asked the duke, sneeringly. "Perhaps when the moment came for me to give her to him, he too would make a bow, and humbly asking my pardon, beg leave to decline the honour. Oh! curse such politeness!"
"My dear duke, I would answer for Edmund with my life. He adores Elvira, and loves you as a father. You, too, have always professed to love him—"
"And so I do. Didn't I rejoice like an old fool at his triumph? Didn't I determine to give my daughter, and bestow my estate upon him? And were not these proofs of love?"
"They were, they were! my dear friend! and, as he has never done any thing to offend you, why should not your favourable intentions continue? Why should you punish him on account of this ungrateful idiot, whom I renounce for ever."