"You are always putting things in train. Leave your trains alone, where I am concerned."
"But why did you come to that place in the accursed island? I am ruined by that journey. Yes; I am ruined. You will not help me to get a shilling from her,—not even for my expenses."
"Certainly not. You are clever enough to do your own work without my aid."
"And is that all from a brother? Well! And now that they have drowned themselves,—the two Claverings,—the fool and the brute; and she can do what she pleases—"
"She could always do as she pleased since Lord Ongar died."
"Yes; but she is more lonely than ever now. That cousin who is the greatest fool of all, who might have had everything,—mon Dieu! yes, everything;—she would have given it all to him with a sweep of her hand, if he would have taken it. He is to marry himself to a little brown girl, who has not a shilling. No one but an Englishman could make follies so abominable as these. Ah, I am sick,—I am sick when I remember it!" And Sophie gave unmistakeable signs of a grief which could hardly have been self-interested. But in truth she suffered pain at seeing a good game spoilt. It was not that she had any wish for Harry Clavering's welfare. Had he gone to the bottom of the sea in the same boat with his cousins, the tidings of his fate would have been pleasurable to her rather than otherwise. But when she saw such cards thrown away as he had held in his hand, she encountered that sort of suffering which a good player feels when he sits behind the chair of one who plays up to his adversary's trump, and makes no tricks of his own kings and aces.
"He may marry himself to the devil, if he please;—it is nothing to me," said the count.
"But she is there;—by herself,—at that place;—what is it called? Ten—bie. Will you not go now, when you can do no harm?"
"No; I will not go now."
"And in a year she will have taken some other one for her husband."