"
"Come, you mustn't say that, Margot. He has nothing of the sort. He's a
curious mixture. A man of the world, and a bit of a Puritan----"
"So are you a Puritan, at heart," she broke in.
Stephen laughed. "No one ever accused me of Puritanism before."
"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.
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