"Well, well, no more
about this. How is Ethel? Gone to sleep after her journey? What do you
think, ma'am, I have brought for her? A proposal."
"Bon Dieu! You don't mean to say Charles Belsize was in earnest!" cries
the dowager. "I always thought it was a----"
"It is not from Lord Highgate, ma'am," Sir Barnes said, gloomily. "It is
some time since I have known that he was not in earnest; and he knows
that I am now."
"Gracious goodness! come to blows with him, too? You have not? That would
be the very thing to make the world talk," says the dowager, with some
anxiety.
"No," answers Barnes. "He knows well enough that there can be no open
rupture. We had some words the other day at a dinner he gave at his own
house; Colonel Newcome and that young beggar, Clive, and that fool, Mr.
Hobson, were there. Lord Highgate was confoundedly insolent. He told me
that I did not dare to quarrel with him because of the account he kept at
our house. I should like to have massacred him! She has told him that I
struck her,--the insolent brute--he says he will tell it at my clubs; and
threatens personal violence to me, there, if I do it again.
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