Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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“You refuse then—​you doom me to perpetual misery.”

“I don’t know what you mean by perpetual misery, but I must tell you frankly that I feel it my duty to at once declare that I cannot for a moment receive you as a suitor, and once and for all I bid you never again to allude to this subject.”

Peace was miserably disappointed. He felt humiliated. The reception he had met with was in every way unsatisfactory.

He did, in his way, really love the young woman to whom he had made so sudden and unexpected a declaration.

Her candour and prompt answers cut him to the quick.

He had no right to expect a young lady, who was so immeasurably superior to himself, to treat him in any other way than she had done; but the audacity, assurance, and conceit of the man were beyond all bounds.

He had hoped to carry the fortress by storm, but the attempt turned out an ignominious failure.

“I cannot tell you, Miss Maitland, how supremely wretched you have made me,” said Peace.

“I am sorry to give pain to anyone, but at the same time I have felt it my bounden duty to be explicit. You have my answer. Let me beg of you, as a personal favour, Mr. Peace, not to ever again refer to this subject.”