"You won't marry an eminent and wealthy man who bestows an honour upon
your family by asking for your hand, and yet you would run away with a
worthless fellow who does not even know why he was put into the world,
and when your family steps in to prevent it, you would violently put
yourself to death in order to die with him, to our eternal shame and
dishonour. That was not nice of you. But sit down. I see you are all of
a tremble. I would fetch you a chair myself if it was not for this
infernal gout of mine."
Henrietta accepted the invitation and sat down, otherwise she must have
collapsed.
"Now look ye, my dear little girl! if you had to deal with an
unmerciful, austere old fellow, a veritable old tiger, in fact, as I
have no doubt you fancy I am, he would make no bones about it but pack
you straight off to a nunnery and so cut you off from the world for
ever."
Henrietta sighed. Such a threat as that sounded to her like a
consolation.
"In the second place, an old tyrant, such as I am imagining, would have
sent that rip of a brother of yours, who is not ashamed to lend a hand
in the seduction of his own sister, would have sent him, I say, to a
reformatory. I may tell you there are several such institutions,
celebrated for their rigour, whither it is usual to send precocious and
incorrigible young scapegraces. And richly he would have deserved it,
too.
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