“What were you going to do on the Downs this morning, Harry, when they made a prisoner of you?”
“That is nothing to do with you,” he replied. “Go, call the rascally doctor, whose ribs I will break, and his men, whom I will murder, for this job.”
“Nothing to do with me, Harry! Are you quite sure?”
“You look, Kitty, as if you knew. Did Lord Chud—— No; he would not. Did Sir Miles go sneaking to you with the news? Gad! I feel inclined to try conclusions with the Norfolk baronet with his cudgel about which he makes such a coil.”
“Never mind who told me. I know the whole wicked, disgraceful, murderous story!”
“Disgraceful! You talk like a woman. Shall a man sit down idly, and see his wife snatched out of his arms?”
“What wife? O Harry! you have gone mad about this business. Cannot you understand that I was never engaged to marry you—that I never thought of such a thing? I could never have been your wife, whether there was any rival or no. And did you think that you would make me think the more kindly of you, should you kill the man who, as you foolishly think, had supplanted you? Or was it out of revenge, and in the hope of making me miserable, that you designed to fight this duel?”
He was silent at this. When a man is in a strait-waistcoat, and chained to a wall, it is difficult to look dignified. But Harry’s look of shame and confusion, under the circumstances of having no arms, was truly pitiful.
“You can talk about that afterwards,” he said doggedly. “Go, call the scoundrel doctor.”
“Presently. I want to tell you, first, what I think about it. Was it kind to the woman you pretended to love to bring upon her the risk of this great unhappiness? Remember, Harry, I told you all. I told you what I could not have told even to Nancy, in the hope of breaking you of this mad passion. I trusted that you were good and true of heart; and this is the return.”