"You did gape."
"I know I gaped and stared. I admit I opened my eyes wide, it was with astonishment at your genius, at the clever and unexpected way in which you overcame a great difficulty, and rallied after a great disappointment."
"Oh! It was that, was it?" asked the Squire, relaxing some of his severity and cooling.
"On my word as a gentlewoman. I never employed those words you attribute to me. Indeed I did not. The only expletives becoming are of a very different quality. So Fox agreed to the proposal?"
"Most heartily and warmly."
"But, brother, I misdoubt me if Fox has much influence with his sister. They are ever spitting and clawing at each other, and it hath appeared to me—and yet I may be wrong—that whatsoever the one suggests the other rejects; they make a point of conscience of differing from each other."
"All that," said the squire, "all that have I foreseen, and I have provided against it. The proposal shall not be covertly favoured by Fox. He shall, indeed, appear to set his face against it, but we shall make Bessie our means of breaking the ice, and drawing us together. I have some notion of letting Fox become Bessie's suitor—now, when he is accepted, and has——"
"But—brother!"
"What in the name of the seven stars do you mean by your buts thrown in whenever I speak? It is indecorous, it is insulting, Magdalen."