“My promised husband!”
“I thought I had that honor!” faltered the witless baronet.
“You thought, sir—you thought!” she replied, contemptuously. “This is the first time I have ever heard that you thought at all! Now, mark me well, Sir Andrew Acton, and let it, I pray you, be once and for all. I think you never asked me to become your wife; and I know, that if you had done so, and if you had been a man and a gentleman, instead of a paltroon and a winebibber, and almost an idiot, I had made answer, as I make answer now—never! never! never! The wife of the grave, if God will it so, but the wife of Sir Andrew Acton, never! Now are you answered, sir? If you are, and if you have one drop of gentle blood in your veins, one touch of gentle feeling in your heart, you will torment me no further, but begone, and leave me, as you have made me, wretched.”
But he simpered, and stood there unabashed, dangling his bonnet, and shuffling his feet, and making no movement to withdraw, until Sir Hugh, who saw that the decisive moment had arrived, bowed his head gravely and said, “I pray you leave us awhile, now, Sir Andrew; I would confer alone with my daughter. I will see you again to-morrow.”
Then he attempted a sort of shuttling bow, and left the room awkwardly, like a cowed cur, fearful of the lash; but when they were left alone, the obstinate old man stood up, and walking straight to his daughter, shook his fore-finger sternly in her face, and said,
“You know me, Margaret. I am not a man of many words, but when I have spoken, I never go backward from my speech.”
“I know it,” she said, firmly, “and I am of your own blood, father, and not base-born.”
“And I have said that you shall marry Andrew Acton.”
“And I, that I will die sooner.”
“Enough of this!” he replied. “I am no dotard, to be driven from my just purpose for a silly girl’s love-sick fancies.”