I was, such were my ruminations, to have
agreed at once to his preposterous offer, and to have been driven, while he
smirked and grimaced behind my back at his acquaintances, through Feltram
in his dog-cart to Elverston; and then, to the just indignation of my
uncle, to have been delivered up to Lady Knolly's guardianship, and to
have handed my driver, as I alighted, the handsome fare of 20.000_l_. It
required the impudence of Tony Lumpkin, without either his fun or his
shrewdness, to have conceived such a prodigious practical joke.
'Maybe you'd like a little tea, Miss?' insinuated Mary Quince.
'What impertinence!' I exclaimed, with one of my angry stamps on the floor.
'Not you, dear old Quince,' I added. 'No--no tea just now.'
And I resumed my ruminations, which soon led me to this train of
thought--'Stupid and insulting as Dudley's proposition was, it yet involved
a great treason against my uncle. Should I be weak enough to be silent, may
he not, wishing to forestall me, misrepresent all that has passed, so as to
throw the blame altogether upon me?'
This idea seized upon me with a force which I could not withstand; and on
the impulse of the moment I obtained admission to my uncle, and related
exactly what had passed.
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