"I am not safe yet. I begin to doubt."
"Can't you trust me? I have assured you it will end as you wish. When have I disappointed you, Lady Lydstone?"
She started at the sound of this name, once familiar, but surrounded now by memories at once painful and terrible.
"It is the rule in your English peerage that when a son becomes a great peer, and the mother is only a commoner, to give her one of the titles. Your Queen does it by prerogative."
"I might have been Lady Lydstone by right, if I had waited," she said slowly.
"And you repent it? Bah! it is too late. Be satisfied. You will be rich, a great lady, respected—"
She made a gesture of dissent.
"Yes; respected. Great ladies always are. You can marry again—whom you please; me, for instance—"
Again the gesture: dissent mixed with unmistakable disgust.
"You are not too flattering, Cyprienne. Do not presume on my good-nature, and remember—"