ousin's conduct may appear to have been an inadequate cause for
such serious uneasiness; but my alarm was caused neither by his acts
nor words, but entirely by his manner, which was strange and even
intimidating to excess. At the beginning of the yesterday's interview
there was a sort of bullying swagger in his air, which towards the
end gave place to the brutal vehemence of an undisguised ruffian--a
transition which had tempted me into a belief that he might seek even
forcibly to extort from me a consent to his wishes, or by means still
more horrible, of which I scarcely dared to trust myself to think, to
possess himself of my property.

I was early next day summoned to attend my uncle in his private
room, which lay in a corner turret of the old building; and thither I
accordingly went, wondering all the way what this unusual measure might
prelude. When I entered the room, he did not rise in his usual courteous
way to greet me, but simply pointed to a chair opposite to his own. This
boded nothing agreeable. I sat down, however, silently waiting until he
should open the conversation.

'Lady Margaret,' at length he said, in a tone of greater sternness than
I thought him capable of using, 'I have hitherto spoken to you as a
friend, but I have not forgotten that I am also your guardian, and that
my authority as such gives me a right to control your conduct. I shall
put a question to you, and I expect and will demand a plain, direct
answer. Have I rightly been informed that you have contemptuously
rejected the suit and hand of my son Edward?'

I stammered forth with a good deal of trepidation:

'I believe--that is, I have, sir, rejected my cousin's proposals; and
my coldness and discouragement might have convinced him that I had
determined to do so.'

'Madam,' replied he, with suppressed, but, as it appeared to me,
intense anger, 'I have lived long enough to know that COLDNESS and
discouragement, and such terms, form the common cant of a worthless
coquette. You know to the full, as well as I, that COLDNESS AND
DISCOURAGEMENT may be so exhibited as to convince their object that
he is neither distasteful or indifferent to the person who wears this
manner. You know, too, none better, that an affected neglect, when
skilfully managed, is amongst the most formidable of the engines which
artful beauty can employ. I tell you, madam, that having, without one
word spoken in discouragement, permitted my son's most marked attentio