freely.

"How dare you be so impertinent?" at last she said, and then she
hurried out of the room without giving the archdeacon the opportunity
of uttering another word. It was with difficulty she contained
herself till she reached her own room; and then, locking the door,
she threw herself on her bed and sobbed as though her heart would
break.

But even yet she had no conception of the truth. She had no idea
that her father and her sister had for days past conceived in sober
earnest the idea that she was going to marry this man. She did not
even then believe that the archdeacon thought that she would do so.
By some manoeuvre of her brain she attributed the origin of the
accusation to Mr. Arabin, and as she did so her anger against him was
excessive, and the vexation of her spirit almost unendurable. She
could not bring herself to think that the charge was made seriously.
It appeared to her most probable that the archdeacon and Mr. Arabin
had talked over her objectionable acquaintance with Mr. Slope; that
Mr. Arabin in his jeering, sarcastic way had suggested the odious
match as being the severest way of treating with contumely her
acquaintance with his enemy; and that the archdeacon, taking the idea
from him, thought proper to punish her by the allusion. The whole
night she lay awake thinking of what had been said, and this appeared
to be the most probable solution.

But the reflexion that Mr. Arabin should have in any way mentioned
her name in connexion with that of Mr. Slope was overpowering; and
the spiteful ill-nature of the archdeacon in repeating the charge to
her made her wish to leave his house almost before the day had broken.
One thing was certain: nothing should make her stay there beyond the
following morning, and nothing should make her sit down to breakfast
in company with Dr. Grantly. When she thought of the man whose name
had been linked with her own, she cried from sheer disgust. It was
only because she would be thus disgusted, thus pained and shocked and
cut to the quick, that the archdeacon had spoken the horrid word.
He wanted to make her quarrel with Mr. Slope, and therefore he had
outraged her by his abominable vulgarity. She determined that at any
rate he should know that she appreciated it.

Nor was the archdeacon a bit better satisfied with the result of his
serious interview than was Eleanor. He gathered from it, as indeed
he could hardly fail to do, that she was very angry with him, but