"You'd better not call this hopeless—neither you nor anybody else who has anything to say to it!"
"Octon's daughter!" He ejaculated the words in a low murmur, flinging his hands out wide.
"Yes, that's it!" said Jenny, her smile getting harder, and with a rather vicious look in her eyes. "That's why, isn't it? That's why she's not good enough for Amyas Lacey, not good enough to be mistress of Fillingford Manor! There's nothing else against her? Only—she's Leonard Octon's daughter! Well, now, I say to you that that shall not be against her. It shall be for her—mightily for her. To that she shall owe everything; that shall give her all she wants. If you have any influence, don't use it against her. Use it for her, back her up. It will be wiser in the interests of the friends whom you're so concerned for." She left the piano and came into the middle of the room, facing him. "Because it's the alternative to that unnatural hideous thing of which you came here to speak—and spoke so plainly. If I'm not much mistaken, I can turn this thing the way I choose. And I tell you that in spite of all you've said, and in spite of all I've said, your friends will be wise to accept the lesser evil. Margaret is better than me, at all events!"
She was on her high horse now. Very handsome she looked, with a glowing color in her cheeks; her voice was full of temper, hard-held. It was the turning point of the scheme which she was working out; through Alison she launched her ultimatum to Fillingford: "Margaret or myself—there is no other alternative."
Alison was recovering himself. He dropped into a chair and looked up at her commanding figure with a smile of kindness—with an admiration wrung from him by her coup.
"You're really wonderful," he told her. "I'll say that for you—and I'll be as worldly as you like for a minute."
"Yes, do try for once. There is such a thing as this world."
"Then—even setting aside the obvious objection, the objection our friends at the Manor are bound to feel—Lacey is Lacey, and will be Fillingford. The girl—I think her as charming as you do—comes from nowhere and has, I suppose, nothing?"
"She'll come from Breysgate Priory—and not empty-handed."
"Of course you'd behave kindly to her, but——"