Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer

what’s happened to put you into one of your tantrums, Miss Deb?’
    ‘I am not in a tantrum!’ replied Deborah furiously. ‘And if Lord Mablethorpe should call, I will see him!’
    ‘Well, that’s a good thing,’ said Wantage. ‘For he’s been here once already, and means to come again. I never saw anything like it, not in all my puff!’
    ‘I wish you will not talk in that odiously vulgar way!’ said Deborah.
    ‘Not in a tantrum: oh, no!’ said Mr Wantage, shaking his head. ‘And me that’s known you from your cradle! Your aunt says as how Master Kit’s a coming home on leave. What do you say to that?’
    Miss Grantham, however, had nothing to say to it. She was an extremely fond sister, but for the moment the iniquities of Mr Ravenscar possessed her mind to the exclusion of all other interests. She ran upstairs to the little back-parlour on the half-landing, which was used as a morning-room. Lady Bellingham was writing letters there, at a spindle-legged table in the window. She looked up as her niece entered the room, and cried: ‘Well, my love, so you are back already! Tell me at once, did—’ She broke off, as her eyes met Miss Grantham’s stormy ones. ‘Oh dear!’ she said, in a dismayed voice. ‘What has happened?’
    Miss Grantham untied her bonnet-strings with a savage jerk, and cast the bonnet on to a chair. ‘He is the vilest, rudest, stupidest, horridest man alive! Oh, but I will serve him out for this! I will make him sorry he ever dared—I’ll have no mercy on him! He shall grovel to me! Oh, I am in such a rage.’
    ‘Yes, my love, I can see you are,’ said her aunt faintly. ‘Did he—did he make love to you?’
    ‘Love!’ exclaimed Miss Grantham. ‘No, indeed! My thoughts did not lie in that direction! I am a harpy, if you please, Aunt Lizzie! Women like me should be whipped at the cart’s tail!’
    ‘Good heavens, Deb, is the man out of his senses?’ demanded Lady Bellingham.
    ‘By no means! He is merely stupid, and rude, and altogether abominable! I hate him! I wish I might never set eyes on him again!’
    ‘But what did he do?’ asked Lady Bellingham bewildered.
    Miss Grantham ground her white teeth. ‘He came to rescue his precious cousin from my toils! That was why he invited me to drive out with him. To insult me!’
    ‘Oh dear, you thought it might be that!’ said her aunt sadly.
    Miss Grantham paid no heed to this interruption. ‘A Grantham is not a fit bride for Lord Mablethorpe! To marry me would be to ruin himself! Oh, I could scream with vexation!’
    Lady Bellingham regarded her doubtfully. ‘But you said much yourself, my dear. I remember distinctly—’
    ‘It doesn’t signify in the least,’ said Miss Grantham. ‘He hi no right to say it’
    Lady Bellingham agreed to this wholeheartedly, after watching her niece pace round the room for several minutes, ventured to inquire what had happened during the course of the drive. Miss Grantham stopped dead her tracks, and replied in a shaking voice: ‘He tried to bribe me!’
    ‘Tried to bribe you not to marry Adrian, Deb?’ asked her aunt. ‘But how very odd of him, when you had never the lea intention of doing so! What can have put such a notion in his head?’
    ‘I am sure I don’t know, and certainly I don’t care a fig replied Deborah untruthfully. ‘He had the insolence to offer me five thousand pounds if I would relinquish my pretensions—my pretensions!—to Adrian’s hand and heart!’
    Lady Bellingham, over whose plump countenance a hopeful expression had begun to creep, looked disappointed, she said: ‘Five thousand! I must say, Deb, I think that is shabby!’
    ‘I said that I feared he was trying to trifle with me,’ recounted Miss Grantham with relish.
    ‘Well, and I am sure you could not have said anything better, my love! I declare, I did not think so meanly of him!’
    ‘Then,’ continued Miss Grantham, ‘he said he would double that figure.’
    Lady Bellingham dropped her