“About me! Why, I was never better in my life.”
“Your looks say as much; but I meant my anxiety to lay my tidings at your feet, and with them myself and my whole future.”
“You may leave the chocolate there, Hislop,” as the man entered with the tray; “unless Count Pracontal would like some.”
“Thanks, my Lady,” said he, bowing his refusal.
“You are wrong, then,” said she, as the servant withdrew. “Hislop makes it with the slightest imaginable flavor of the cherry laurel; and it is most soothing. Is n't he a love?”
“Hislop?”
“No, my darling squirrel yonder. The poor dear has been ill these two days. He bit Sir Marcus Guff, and that horrid creature seems to have disagreed with the darling, for he has pined ever since. Don't caress him; he hates men, except Monsignore Alberti, whom, probably, he mistakes for an old lady. And what becomes of all the Bramleighs—are they left penniless?”
“By no means. I do not intend to press my claim farther than the right to the estates. I am not going to proceed for—I forget the legal word—the accumulated profits. Indeed, if Mr. Bramleigh be only animated by the spirit I have heard attributed to him, there is no concession that I am not disposed to make him.”
“What droll people Frenchmen are! They dash their morality, like their cookery, with something discrepant. They fancy it means 'piquancy.' What, in the name of all romance, have you to do with the Bramleighs? Why all this magnanimity for people who certainly have been keeping you out of what was your own, and treating your claim to it as a knavery?”
“You might please to remember that we are related.”