"If you like to call it so—certainly," said Lady Caroline, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
"This was your revenge?—when you found that Margaret had come to me!"
"You use strange words, Mr. Wyvis Brand. Revenge is out of date—a quite too ridiculous idea. I simply mean that I never wish to intermeddle with my neighbors' affairs, and should not have thought of bringing this matter forward if your pretentions could have been settled in an ordinary way. If Margaret"—glancing at her daughter, who stood white and thunderstricken at her side—"had behaved with submission and with modesty, I should not have had to inflict what seems to be considerable pain upon you. But it is her fault and yours. Young people should submit to the judgment of their elders: we do not refuse to gratify their wishes without good reason."
Lady Caroline spoke with a cold dignity, which she did not usually assume. Margaret half covered her face with one hand, and turned aside. The sight of the slow tears trickling through her fingers almost maddened Wyvis, as he stood before her, looking alternately at her and at Lady Caroline. Mrs. Brand and Janetta were left in the background of the little group. The older woman was still weeping, and Janetta was engaged in soothing and caressing her; but neither of them lost a word which passed between the man for whom they cared and the woman whom at that moment they both sincerely hated.
"But is it a good reason?" said Wyvis at last. His eye flashed beneath his dark brow, his nostril began to quiver. "If I had been Mark Brand's son, you mean, you would have given me Margaret?"
"There would then have been no disqualification of birth," said Lady Caroline, clearly. "There might then have been disqualifications of character or of fortune, but these we need hardly consider now. The other—the primary—fact is conclusive."
"Mamma, mamma!" broke out Margaret; "don't say these terrible things—please don't. It isn't Wyvis' fault."
"God bless you, my darling!" Wyvis muttered between his teeth.
"No, it is not his fault; it is his misfortune," said Lady Caroline.
"I am to understand, then, Lady Caroline," said Wyvis, to whom Margaret's expostulation seemed to have brought sudden calmness and courage, "that my lowly origin forms an insurmountable barrier to my marriage with Miss Adair?"