She watched Cornelia across the street, and then turned to the mirror, and wound her ringlets over her fingers. “I don’t care,” she muttered. “It was her fault to begin with. She tempted Rem, and he fell. Men always fall when women tempt them; it is their nature to. I am going to stand by Rem, right or wrong, and I only wish I could tell Mary Damer what I think of her. She has another lover, of course she has—or she would not have talked about her ‘honour’ to Rem.”
To such thoughts she was raging, when Peter Van Ariens came home to dinner, and she could not restrain them. He listened for a minute or two, and then struck the table no gentle blow?
“In my house, Arenta,” he said, “I will have no such words. What you think, you think; but such thoughts must be shut close in your mind. In keeping that letter, I say Rem behaved like a scoundrel; he was cruel, and he was a coward. Because he is my son I will not excuse him. No indeed! For that very reason, the more angry am I at such a deed. Now then, he shall acknowledge to George Hyde and Cornelia Moran the wrong he did them, ere in my home and my heart, he rights himself.”
“Is Cornelia going to be married?”
“That is what I hear.”
“To Lord Hyde?”
“That also, is what I hear.”
“Well, as I am in mourning, I cannot go to the wedding; so then I am delighted to have told her a little of my mind.”
“It is a great marriage for the Doctor’s daughter; a countess she will be.”
“And a marquise I am. And will you please say, if either countess or marquise is better than mistress or madame? Thank all the powers that be! I have learned the value of a title, and I shall change marquise for mistress, as soon as I can do so.”