“I dare say you have, since I hear that you have practiced with any number of young ladies! And you tried to practice upon me!” “I have been told since my first Season that I make love quite charmingly, thank you!” “You most certainly implied it: ‘The crazy things you do!’ ‘Not the wife that would suit me!’ I wonder that you are accounted such a noted flirt, if this is how you make love!” “Spare me the Covent Garden histrionics – I never said that you were ill-bred!” “How should I treat a proposal made unintentionally and immediately taken back?” Phoebe sank into an exaggerated curtsy, one hand to her breast, crying, “Oh, la, sir, I am most tremendous flattered your Grace is so overcome that you asked me to marry you, when you never meant to! In spite of my ill-bred ways!” “Perhaps you are, if this is how you treat a proposal of marriage!” Sylvester rejoined. “Oh, you suppose I am in need of taming?” Nettled, he retorted, “No, I only tried to. I wanted never to see you again after that night at the Castlereaghs’ – I thought so, but it wasn’t so, because when I did see you again – I was overjoyed.” His face pale, he attempted, “If it sounded to you as though I meant to insult you, believe that it was not so! What I said to you before…. Sylvester had never before tried to make love to a lady seething with rage and contempt.
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