"What has the poor fellow done, papa?" asked Emily.
"Done? He has deceived us in the most athrocious manner," Miss Emily's papa said. "He has thrifled with your affections, and outraged my own fine feelings. He has represented himself as a man of property, and it turruns out that he is no betther than a beggar. Haven't I often told ye he had two thousand a year? He's a pauper, I tell ye, Miss Costigan; a depindent upon the bountee of his mother; a good woman, who may marry again, who's likely to live forever, and who has but five hundred a year. How dar he ask ye to marry into a family which has not the means of providing for ye? Ye've been grossly deceived and put upon, Milly, and it's my belief, his old ruffian of an uncle in a wig is in the plot against us."
"That soft old gentleman? What has he been doing, papa?" continued Emily still imperturbable.
Costigan informed Milly, that when she was gone, Major Pendennis told him, in his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, that young Arthur had no fortune at all, that the major had asked him (Costigan) to go to the lawyers ("wherein he knew the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I can't meet them," the captain parenthetically remarked), and see the lad's father's will: and finally that an infernal swindle had been practiced upon him by the pair, and that he was resolved either on a marriage, or on the blood of both of them.
Milly looked very grave and thoughtful, rubbing the white satin shoes. "Sure, if he's no money, there's no use marrying him, papa," she said sententiously.
"Why did the villain say he was a man of prawpertee?" asked Costigan.
"The poor fellow always said he was poor," answered the girl. "'Twas you would have it he was rich, papa—and made me agree to take him."
"He should have been explicit and told us his income, Milly," answered the father. "A young fellow who rides a blood mare, and makes presents of shawls and bracelets, is an impostor, if he has no money:—and as for his uncle, bedad, I'll pull off his wig whenever I see 'um. Bows, here, shall take a message to him and tell him so. Either it's a marriage, or he meets me in the field like a man, or I tweak 'um on the nose in front of his hotel or in the gravel walks of Fairoaks Park before all the county, bedad."
"Bedad you may send somebody else with the message," said Bows, laughing. "I'm a fiddler not a fighting man, captain."
"Pooh, you've no spirit, sir," roared the general. "I'll be my own second, if no one will stand by and see me injured. And I'll take my case of pistols and shoot 'um in the coffee-room of the George."