"I would not leave Marie."
"I suspected that Marie was the explanation. The publicity of a yacht does not offer much opportunity for assignations. You have behaved very badly towards me, Willie. You had no right to make appointments with my servant. Still less have you any right to resent my action in sending her back to the Humming Top. I am speaking to you exactly as I should to an English gentleman and a social equal. Lord Topsham has behaved badly, Willie. Lord Topsham, under the malign influence of that Clifford wretch, has got his head swelled. When you go to England you will have many miseries and many disappointments. You will discover that, in these modern days, English Lords count for nothing except for their worth as men. They have no rights and no powers beyond those of common men. But, Willie, because of their rank and place they are expected to behave always as honourable gentlemen. It is no act of a gentleman to come ranting and raging at me because I stopped your intrigue with my servant Marie. An Englishman, even one without rank or station, would be ashamed to speak to me in reproof upon such a subject. He would have felt too much of shame for his conduct. You played me a low trick, Willie, and I am excessively angry with you."
"Why should I feel shame before you?" asked Willie haughtily. Never before had he used such a tone towards Madame Gilbert, and she looked searchingly at him. She had noticed and lamented the almost daily change observable in him, but though much of his old tender regard for her had been visibly slipping away, he had never yet used words of offence.
"Why should I feel shame before you?" he asked again.
Madame Gilbert shrugged her shoulders. It was a question difficult to answer. After all the boy was a Melanesian who had never been outside his own seas, and one could not expect him to comprehend the standards of social conduct in Europe.
"You were my friend, Willie, my dear friend. And Marie was my maid. Don't you see that your action was not quite worthy of one who calls himself Lord Topsham? You are now the head of a very ancient and honourable family."
"Honourable!" cried Willie scornfully. "You told me that you were the honourable wife of a big and handsome husband. Now I know that you are nothing but a widow."
"Who told you that?" asked Madame quietly.
"Is it true?"