letter, and threw himself down on the sofa
while she read it. "You have been very careful in choosing your
language, Mr. Prosper: 'It will be expedient that I should make known to
you the entire truth.' Certainly, Mr. Prosper, certainly. The entire
truth is the best thing,--next to entire beer, my brother would say."
"The horrid vulgar woman!" Mr. Prosper ejaculated to himself. "'There
seems to have been a complete misunderstanding with regard to that
amiable lady, Miss Tickle.' No misunderstanding at all. You said you
liked her, and I supposed you did. And when I had been living for twenty
years with a female companion, who hasn't sixpence in the world to buy a
rag with but what she gets from me, was it to be expected that I should
turn her out for any man?"

"An annuity might have been arranged, Miss Thoroughbung."

"Bother an annuity! That's all you think about feelings! Was she to go
and live alone and desolate because you wanted some one to nurse you?
And then those wretched ponies. I tell you, Peter Prosper, that let me
marry whom I will, I mean to drive a pair of ponies, and am able to do
so out of my own money. Ponies, indeed! It's an excuse. Your heart has
failed you. You've come to know a woman of spirit, and now you are
afraid that she'll be too much for you. I shall keep this letter, though
it has not been sent."

"You can do as you please about that, Miss Thoroughbung."

"Oh yes; of course I shall keep it, and shall give it to Messrs. Soames
& Simpson. They are most gentlemanlike men, and will be shocked at such
conduct as this from the Squire of Buston. The letter will be published
in the newspapers, of course. It will be very painful to me, no doubt,
but I shall owe it to my sex to punish you. When all the county are
talking of your conduct to a lady, and saying that no man could have
done it, let alone no gentleman, then you will feel it. Miss Tickle,--and
a pair of ponies! You expected to get my money and nothing to give for
it. Oh, you mean man!"

She must have been aware that every word she spoke was a dagger. There
was a careful analysis of his peculiar character displayed in every word
of reproach which she uttered. Nothing could have wounded him more than
the comparison between himself and Soames & Simpson. They were
gentlemen! "The vulgarest men in all Buntingford!" he declared to
himself, and always ready for any sharp practice. Whereas he was no man,
Miss Thoroughbung said,--a mean creature