"Maybe you've never shown any one else that side of you, as you show it
to me. You're always being shocked at what I do and say."
For that, it was hardly necessary to be a Puritan. But Stephen shrugged
his shoulders instead of answering.
"Your brother is a cold-hearted tyrant, and his wife is a snob. If she
weren't, she wouldn't hang on to her duchess-hood after marrying again.
It would be good enough for _me_ to call myself Lady Northmorland, and I
hope I shall some day."
Stephen's sensitive nostrils quivered. He understood in that moment how
a man might actually wish to strike a nagging virago of a woman, no
matter how beautiful. And he wondered with a sickening heaviness of
heart how he was to go on with the wretched business of his engagement.
But he pushed the question out of his mind, fiercely. He was in for this
thing now. He _must_ go on.
"Let all that alone, won't you?" he said, in a well-controlled tone.
"I can't," Margot exclaimed. "I hate your brother. He killed my
father."
"Because he defended the honour of our grandfather, and upheld his own
rights, when Mr. Lorenzi came to England to dispute them?"
"Who knows if they _were_ his rights, or my father's? My father believed
they were his, or he wouldn't have crossed the ocean and spent all his
money in the hope of stepping into your brother's shoes."
There were those--and Lord Northmorland and the Duchess of Amidon were
among them--who did not admit that Lorenzi had believed in his "rights."
And as for the money he had spent in trying to establish a legal claim
to the Northmorland title and estates, it had not been his own, but lent
him by people he had hypnotized with his plausible eloquence.
"That question was decided in court----"
"It would be harder for a foreigner to get an English nobleman's title
away than for a camel to go through the eye of the tiniest needle in the
world. But never mind. All that's buried in his grave, and you're giving
me everything father wanted me to have. I wish I could keep my horrid
temper better in hand, and I'd never make you look so cross. But I
inherited my emotional nature from Margherita Lorenzi, I suppose. What
can you expect of a girl who had an Italian prima donna for a
grandmother? And I oughtn't to quarrel with the fair Margherita for
leaving me her temper, since she left me her face too, and I'm fairly
well satisfied with that. Everybody says I'm the image of my
grandmother. And you ought to know, after seeing her picture in dozens
of illustrated papers, as well as in that pamphlet poor father
published."
"If you want me to tell you that you are one of the handsomest women who
ever lived, I'll do so at once," said Stephen.