[Lord Kilgobbin by Charles Lever]@TWC D-Link bookLord Kilgobbin CHAPTER XXI 10/11
I have lived to know better, Mathew Kearney: I have lived to see that we don't suit each other at all, and I have come here to declare to you formally that it's all off. No nephew of mine shall come here for a wife.
The heir to Shea's Barn shan't bring the mistress of it out of Kilgobbin Castle.' 'Trust _me_ for that, old lady,' cried he, forgetting all his good manners in his violent passion. 'You'll be all the freer to catch a young aide-de-camp from the Castle,' said she sneeringly; 'or maybe, indeed, a young lord--a rank equal to your own.' 'Haven't you said enough ?' screamed he, wild with rage. 'No, nor half, or you wouldn't be standing there, wringing your hands with passion and your hair bristling like a porcupine.
You'd be at my feet, Mathew Kearney--ay, at my feet.' 'So I would, Miss Betty,' chimed he in, with a malicious grin, 'if I was only sure you'd be as cruel as the last time I knelt there.
Oh dear! oh dear! and to think that I once wanted to marry that woman!' 'That you did! You'd have put your hand in the fire to win her.' 'By my conscience, I'd have put myself altogether there, if I had won her.' 'You understand now, sir,' said she haughtily, 'that there's no more between us.' 'Thank God for the same!' ejaculated he fervently. 'And that no nephew of mine comes courting a daughter of yours ?' 'For his own sake, he'd better not.' 'It's for his own sake I intend it, Mathew Kearney.
It's of himself I'm thinking.
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