However, I would not allow it, because I hate sudden changes.
Another thing also astonished me--namely, a beautiful letter from Marwood de Whichehalse himself (sent by a groom soon afterwards), in which he apologised to me, as if I had been his equal, for his rudeness to my sister, which was not intended in the least, but came of their common alarm at the moment, and his desire to comfort her.

Also he begged permission to come and see me, as an old schoolfellow, and set everything straight between us, as should be among honest Blundellites.
All this was so different to my idea of fighting out a quarrel, when once it is upon a man, that I knew not what to make of it, but bowed to higher breeding.

Only one thing I resolved upon, that come when he would he should not see Annie.

And to do my sister justice, she had no desire to see him.
However, I am too easy, there is no doubt of that, being very quick to forgive a man, and very slow to suspect, unless he hath once lied to me.

Moreover, as to Annie, it had always seemed to me (much against my wishes) that some shrewd love of a waiting sort was between her and Tom Faggus: and though Tom had made his fortune now, and everybody respected him, of course he was not to be compared, in that point of respectability, with those people who hanged the robbers when fortune turned against them.
So young Squire Marwood came again, as though I had never smitten him, and spoke of it in as light a way as if we were still at school together.