“No. As the legitimate and only daughter of Lord Clare, who died without will, I have the sole right to all that was his. You know that the courts will confirm this right, or I had never been thus admitted to your presence. Your eye wavers; your lips curve in terror rather than scorn. In your soul you feel that to hold possession of this house for a day is rank usurpation; your lawyers have told you all this before.”
“How did you learn that?”
“From your face, madam—from the fact that you do not spurn me from your presence as of old.”
She smiled, not scornfully, her blue lips seemed to have lost all strength for so strong an expression, but with a sort of baffled spite.
“And so you would take the estates and attach my son as an appendage—this is kind!”
“Madam, I will resign all right to these estates and title on the marriage day of your son—not with me, the hated gipsy, but with Cora Clark, whom he loves, and who loves him. Greenhurst and the title to rest with you as if I had never existed—all the unentailed property to be divided between your son and Mr. Morton, whose rights we cannot honestly waive.”
Her eyes opened wide with astonishment. She fell back on her sofa, and folded a hand over them, as if ashamed of appearing startled by what I had said. At last she sat upright again and looked at me searchingly.
“You will do this?”
“I will!”
“Why?—your motives?”