I decline to take any further share in it."
With these last words in his mouth, he stuck his hands defiantly into his
pockets and stalked out into the veranda, looking every inch a man.
Zoe folded her arms and gazed after him with undisguised admiration. How
well everything he did became him; his firing up--his _brusquerie--_the
very movements of his body, all so piquant, charming, and unwomanly! As
he vanished from her admiring eyes, she turned, with flaming cheeks, on
Miss Maitland, and said, "Well, aunt, you have driven them both out at
the window; now, say something pretty to Fanny and me, and drive us out
at the door."
Miss Maitland hung her head; she saw she had them all against her but
Fanny, and Fanny was a trimmer. She said, sorrowfully, "No, Zoe. I feel
how unattractive I have made the room. I have driven away the gods of
your idolatry--they are only idols of clay; but that you can't believe. I
will banish nobody else, except a cross-grained, but respectable old
woman, who is too experienced, and too much soured by it, to please young
people when things are going wrong."
With this she took her bed-candle, and retired.
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