A smothered exclamation came to him from the embrasure, and he was wondering what part of the epistle could have caused it when she faced him suddenly, looking at him with shining eyes, and with a flush of red blood mounting to her forehead.
‘In all my life I have never met with such an outrageous piece of impertinence!’ she exclaimed, tossing the paper to him. ‘How you have had the effrontery to show me such a thing passes my understanding! Take it, sir! Take it, and be obliging enough to leave me. You are never likely to “live to regret” your marriage with Miss Raeburn, for, while I have any influence with her, you will never have the chance of making it. You may tell Lady Fordyce, from me, that the fact that she is a member of your family is sufficient reason for my forbidding my niece to enter it!’
Crauford stood aghast, almost ready to clutch at his coat like a man in a gale of wind, and with scarcely wits left to tell him that he had given Lady Eliza the wrong letter. The oblique attacks he had occasionally suffered from his mother when vexed were quite unlike this direct onslaught. He went towards her, opening his mouth to speak. She waved him back.
‘Not a word, sir! not a word! I will ring the bell and order your horse to be brought.’
‘Lady Eliza, I beg of you, I implore you, to hear what I have got to say!’
He was almost breathless.
‘I have heard enough. Do me the favour to go, Mr. Fordyce.’
‘It is not my fault! I do assure you it is not my fault! I gave you the wrong letter, ma’am. I had never dreamed of your seeing that.’
‘What do I care which letter it is? That such impertinence should have been written is enough for me. Cecilia “unable to support the dignity of being your wife”! Faugh!’
‘If you would only read my father’s letter,’ exclaimed Crauford, drawing it out of his pocket, ‘you would see how very different it is. He is prepared to do everything—anything.’