‘Who am I, Mr. Dugdale, that you should trouble yourself about my opinion?’
‘You can make yourself felt,’ said I, smiling; ‘I should consider your eyes matchless in their power to subdue. There is a little passage in Shakespeare that very exquisitely fits my theory of you.’
‘I would rather not hear it,’ she answered, with a slight curl of her lip and a faint tinge of rose in her cheeks. ‘You once applied to me a sentence from Shakespeare that was very unflattering.’
‘What was it?’
‘You compared my complexion to the white death that one of Shakespeare’s girls talks about.’
‘I remember. I am astonished that your aunt should have repeated to you what she overheard by stealth.’
‘I do not understand,’ she exclaimed, firing up.
‘She was behind me when I made that quotation, and I was unconscious of her presence. She should have respected my ignorance. I meant no wrong,’ I went on, pretending to get into a passion. ‘Your complexion is pale, and I sought to illustrate it to my little friend Saunders by an expression of striking nobility and beautiful dignity. If ever I have the fortune to find myself in your aunt’s company, I shall give her my mind on this business. How am I to know but that her repeating what she had heard me let fall excited in you the disgust I found in your treatment of me?’
She cooled down as I grew hot.
‘The extravagance of your language shocks me,’ she exclaimed, but with very little temper in her voice. ‘Disgust? You have no right to use that word. You were always very courteous to me on board the Countess Ida.’