Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

30. CHAPTER XXX: ANOTHER LOVE SCENE (continued)

'I deny it. I utterly deny it,' said Eleanor, jumping from her seat, and literally flashing before Mr Arabin, as she stood on the drawing-room floor. He had never seen her so excited, he had never seen her look so beautiful.

'I utterly deny it,' said she. 'Dr Grantly has no sort of jurisdiction over me whatsoever. Do you and he forget that I am not altogether alone in this world? Do you forget that I have a father? Dr Grantly, I believe, always has forgotten it.'

'From you, Mr Arabin,' she continued, 'I would have listened to advice because I should have expected it to have been given as one friend may advise another; not as a schoolmaster gives an order to a pupil. I might have differed from you; on this matter I should have done so; but had you spoken to me in your usual manner and with your usual freedom I should not have been angry. But now--was it manly of you, Mr Arabin, to speak of me in this way--, so disrespectful--so--? I cannot bring myself to repeat what you said. You must understand what I feel. Was it just of you to speak of me in such a way, and to advise my sister's husband to turn me out of my sister's house because I chose to know a man of whose doctrine you disapprove?'

'I have no alternative left to me, Mrs Bold,' said he, standing with his back to the fire-place, looking down intently at the carpet pattern and speaking with a slow measured voice, 'but to tell you plainly what did take place between me and Dr Grantly.'

'Well,' said she, finding that he paused for a moment.

'I am afraid that what I may say may pain you.'

'It cannot well do so more than what you have already done,' said she.

'Dr Grantly asked me whether I thought it would be prudent for him to receive you in his house as the wife of Mr Slope, and I told him that I thought it would be imprudent. Believing it to be utterly impossible that Mr Slope and--'