offends and disgusts me. If you have one spark of gentlemanly feeling remaining, you will leave me instantly."
"Now why," said Sir Mulberry, "why will you keep up this appearance of excessive rigour, my sweet creature? Now, be more natural—my dear Miss Nickleby, be more natural—do."
Kate hastily rose; but as she rose. Sir Mulberry caught her dress, and forcibly detained her.
"Let me go, Sir," she cried, her heart swelling with anger. "Do you hear? Instantly—this moment."
"Sit down, sit down," said Sir Mulberry; "I want to talk to you."
"Unhand me, Sir, this instant," cried Kate.
"Not for the world," rejoined Sir Mulberry. Thus speaking, he leant over, as if to replace her in her chair; but the young lady making a violent effort to disengage herself, he lost his balance, and measured his length upon the ground. As Kate sprung forward to leave the room, Mr. Ralph Nickleby appeared in the door-way, and confronted her.
"What is this?" said Ralph.
"It is this, Sir," replied Kate, violently agitated: "that beneath the roof where I, a helpless girl, your dead brother's child, should most have found protection, I have been exposed to insult which should make you shrink to look upon me. Let me pass you."
Ralph did shrink, as the indignant girl fixed her kindling eye upon him; but he did not comply with her injunction, nevertheless; for he led her to a distant seat, and returning and approaching Sir Mulberry Hawk, who had by this time risen, motioned towards the door.
"Your way lies there, Sir," said Ralph, in a suppressed voice, that some devil might have owned with pride.
"What do you mean by that?" demanded his friend, fiercely.
The swoln veins stood out like sinews on Ralph's Wrinkled forehead, and the nerves about his mouth worked as though some unendurable torture wrung them; but he smiled disdainfully, and again pointed to the door.
"Do you know me, you madman?" asked Sir Mulberry.
"Well," said Ralph. The fashionable vagabond for the moment quite quailed under the steady look of the older sinner, and walked towards the door, muttering as he went.
"You wanted the lord, did you?" he said, stopping short when he reached the door, as if a new light had broken in upon him, and confronting Ralph again. "Damme, I was in the way, was I?"
Ralph smiled again, but made no answer.
"Who brought him to you first?" pursued Sir Mulberry; "and how without me could you ever have wound him in your net as you have?"
"The net is a large one, and rather full," said Ralph. "Take care that it chokes nobody in the meshes."
"You would sell your flesh and blood for money; yourself, if you have not already made a bargain with the devil," retorted the other. "Do you mean to tell me that your pretty niece was not brought here as a decoy for the drunken boy down stairs?"
