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, altogether unworthy to be
regarded as a gentleman. He knew himself to be Mr. Prosper of Buston
Hall, with centuries of Prospers for his ancestors; whereas Soames was
the son of a tax-gatherer, and Simpson had come down from London as a
clerk from a solicitor's office in the City. And yet it was true that
people would talk of him as did Miss Thoroughbung! His cruelty would be
in every lady's mouth. And then his stinginess about the ponies would be
the gossip of the county for twelve months. And, as he found out what
Miss Thoroughbung was, the disgrace of even having wished to marry her
loomed terribly large before him.
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