"If this one opportunity - the only one I can ever be offered! - is denied me, " declared Kitty dramatically, "all hope is at an end!"
"Yes, but - I mean - No, dash it, Kitty - !"
"And it will be you, whom I have always believed the kindest of my cousins - at least, you are not indeed my cousin - it will be you who have inexorably slammed the gates upon my aspirations!"
"Done what?" demanded Freddy.
"Condemned to a life of misery and - and of indignant old age!"
"No, that´s coming it too strong!" protested Freddy. "I never - "
"I should not have asked you to help me," said Kitty, stricken by remorse. "Only it seemed to me that here, perhaps, was a chance offered me of escaping from my wretched existence! I see that it will not do! I beg your pardon, Freddy: pray do not think of it again!"
Getting hit by a freight train or meeting one of Georgette Heyer´s determined heroines with a plan: it pretty much amounts to the same thing for the poor chap at the receiving end.
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