“I marry you!”

“Oh! don’t say you won’t, for God’s sake, don’t say you won’t,” said George, with a sudden change of manner from the confident to the supplicatory.  “Look, I beg you not to, on my knees,” and he actually flung himself down on the grass roadway and grovelled before her in an abandonment of passion hideous to behold.

She turned very pale, and answered him in a cold, quiet voice, every syllable of which fell upon him like the stroke of a knife.

“Such a thing would be quite impossible for many reasons, but I need only repeat you one that you are already aware of.  I am engaged to Mr. Heigham.”

“Bah, that is nothing.  I know that; but you will not throw away such a love as I have to offer for the wavering affection of a boy.  We can soon get rid of him.  Write and tell him that you have changed your mind.  Listen, Angela,” he went on, catching her by the skirt of her dress; “he is not rich, he has only got enough for a bare living.  I have five times the money, and you shall help to spend it.  Don’t marry a young beggar like that; you won’t get value for yourself.  It will pay you ever so much better to marry me.”

George was convinced from his experience of the sex that every woman could be bought if only you bid high enough; but, as the sequel showed, he could not well have used a worse argument to a person like Angela, or one more likely to excite the indignation that fear of him, together with a certain respect for the evident genuineness of his suffering, had hitherto kept in suppression.  She wrenched her dress free from him, leaving a portion of its fabric in his hand.

“Are you not ashamed?” she said, her voice trembling with indignation and her eyes filled with angry tears; “are you not ashamed to talk to me like this, you, my own father’s cousin, and yourself old enough to be my father?  I tell you that my love is already given, which would have been a sufficient answer to any gentleman, and you reply by saying that you are richer than the man I love.  Do you believe that a woman thinks of nothing but money? or do you suppose that I am to be bought like a beast at the market?  Get up from the ground, for, since your brutality forces me to speak so plainly in my own defence, I must tell you once and for all that you will get nothing by kneeling to me.  Listen:  I would rather die than be your wife; rather than always see your face about me, I would pass my life in prison; I had sooner be touched by a snake than by you.  You are quite hateful to me.  Now you have your answer, and I beg that you will get up and let me pass!”

Drawn up the full height of her majestic stature, her face flushed with emotion, and her clear eyes flashing scornful fire, whilst in her hand she still held the bough of sweet honeysuckle; Angela formed a strange contrast to the miserable man crouched at her feet, swaying himself to and fro and moaning, his hat off and his face hidden in his trembling hands.