"I mean to make you suffer, meddlar, and I don't care this fig for contempt of courting."

(144.20-146.26)  In this passage, Isabel's (identified at one point here as "isabeaubel") response to this chapter's tenth question continues.  As her monologue progresses, a pattern emerges.  She addresses one of her lover's concerns or sources of insecurity, she says something to upset him further, and she apologies and professes her affection.  The passage picks up with her saying, "Listen, loviest!  Of course it was too kind of you, miser, to remember my sighs in shockings . . . ."  She begins with a loving address to her suitor, then thanks him for remembering the size of her stockings and/or her sighs in her states of shock.  Of course, this loving address is rendered ambiguous by her also calling her beloved, "miser," which could mean exactly what it says, but it could also stand for "mister."  Isabel takes pride in her appearance, and it at least seems that the suitor is understanding of that, if not necessarily encouraging of the fact.

This expression of affection takes a turn for the worse, however, when Isabel goes into fairly graphic detail when describing a perhaps hypothetical scene where she engaged in "unlawful converse" with a Mr Polkingtone at the behest of a Mother Browne (who may or may not be, or at least be a counterpart to, the gossip Father Browne, who we encountered in the scene with the Cad's wife).  Isabel once again apologies ("I'm terribly sorry, I swear to you I am!") before placing the blame for the whole thing on the conniving Browne (and suggesting that the suitor himself may occasionally flirt with Mother Browne).

The cycle repeats itself, with Isabel once again flirting with her beloved.  She recognizes that he's in agony, and that she's a cause of that agony.  "I mean to make you suffer," she says.  At the same time, she says she's "tender" and wants to nurture him back to happiness:  "Yes, the buttercups told me, hug me, damn it all, and I'll kiss you back to life, my peachest."  She soon takes her answer to the next proverbial level by beginning to seduce him.  This is maybe going too far for the suitor, though.  Isabel says, "If I am laughing with you?  No, lovingest, I'm not so dying to take my rise out of you, adored.  Not in the very least."  Of course, you get the sense that she actually is mocking him here, as she puts on some airs of modesty while still speaking at least somewhat immodestly.

Today's reading ends with an extended affront to the suitor.  "And because you pluckless lankaloot," Isabel says, "I hate the very thought of the thought of you."  She goes on to say that she's soon to marry a French engineer who is as "loopy" on her as she is "leapy" for him.  She describes the moment they fell in love, when he carried her off a boat and onto a beach in a manner reminiscent (as explained by McHugh) of King Mark and Isolde.

Where is Isabel's answer heading?  We'll find out tomorrow when we finish the answer to the tenth question.