“Pardon me, madam; my dispute with Mr Bentinck, with which you appear to be acquainted, related to the respective merits of the King’s officers and the Company’s, as he also will tell you if you’ll ask him.”
This comforted me a little at first, but I soon shook my head.
“Ah, sir, you should have settled your subject of debate earlier, if you desired to throw dust in the eyes of Calcutta. Now ’tis too late.”
“Indeed, dear madam,” he said, very earnestly, “I’m at a loss to know how you can have experienced the uneasiness you hint at in the few hours since my meeting with Mr Bentinck; but rest assured that my sword is at your service to fight all Calcutta if any one would breathe a word to your prejudice.”
“Oh, sir, you mistake me!” I cried. “Alas that I should have to say it, your sword has done me too much harm already. Why should you, who had no reason to resent ’em, call attention to words which would never have been remarked—which would have been forgot as soon as uttered—if it had not been that your precipitancy fitted too well with the spiteful schemes of one that is ever on the watch to mortify me?”
“I vow, madam, I don’t understand you. I had no right to resent Mr Bentinck’s words, you say? Sure any gentleman is bound to resent a disparagement of the lady he esteems above all others?”
“Questionless, sir; but your Araminta is that lady.”
“But sure you’re Araminta, madam.”
I thought my ears must have deceived me, as I stared at Mr Fraser, but his countenance was so full of contrition and earnestness that I was taken aback. “I am Araminta, sir?”
“Sure, madam, you must have penetrated my expedient before? So often as you have rallied me upon the subject of Araminta—you could not be in earnest?”