Armadale's good opinion--to assert herself by an explosion of
virtuous indignation. She wondered how he could think of such
a thing after his conduct with Miss Gwilt, and after her father
had forbidden him the house! Did he want to make her feel how
inexcusably she had forgotten what was due to herself? Was it
worthy of a gentleman to propose what he knew as well as she did
was impossible? and so on, and so on. Any man with brains in his
head would have known what all this rodomontade really meant.
Armadale took it so seriously that he actually attempted to
justify himself.
"He declared, in his headlong, blundering way, that he was quite
in earnest; he and her father might make it up and be friends
again; and, if the major persisted in treating him as a stranger,
young ladies and gentlemen in their situation had made runaway
marriages before now, and fathers and mothers who wouldn't
forgive them before had forgiven them afterward. Such
outrageously straightforward love-making as this left Miss
Milroy, of course, but two alternatives--to confess that she had
been saying No when she meant Yes, or to take refuge in another
explosion.
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