Not a word dropped from her while he read; and though once or twice he paused as if to invite a remark or a question, she never spoke, nor by a look or a gesture denoted how the tidings affected her.
“Well,” asked he at last, “what do you say to it all?”
“It's worse—I mean worse for us—than I had ever suspected! Surely, Gusty, you had no conception that their case had such apparent strength and solidity?”
“I have thought so for many a day,” said he, gloomily.
“Thought that they, and not we—” she could not go on.
“Just so, dearest,” said he, drawing his chair to her side, and laying his hand affectionately on her shoulder.
“And do you believe that poor papa thought so?” said she, and her eyes now swam in tears.
A scarcely perceptible nod was all his answer.
“Oh, Gusty, this is more misery than I was prepared for!” cried she, throwing herself on his shoulder. “To think that all the time we were—what many called—outraging the world with display; exhibiting our wealth in every ostentatious way; to think that it was not ours, that we were mere pretenders, with a mock rank, a mock station.”
“My father did not go thus far, Nelly,” said he, gravely. “That he did not despise these pretensions I firmly believe; but that they ever gave him serious reason to suppose his right could be successfully disputed, this I do not believe. His fear was, that when the claim came to be resisted by one like myself, the battle would be ill fought. It was in this spirit he said, 'Would that Marion had been a boy! '”