“You rather exaggerate our demerits, my dear Princess,” said Upton, smiling. “We really do not like to be so very odious as you would make us.”
“You are excellent people, with whom no one can live,—that's the whole of it,” said she, with a saucy laugh. “If your friend Lord Glencore had been satisfied to stay at home and marry one of his own nation, he might have escaped a deal of unhappiness, and saved a most amiable creature much more sorrow than falls to the lot of the least fortunate of her own country. I conclude you have some influence over him?”
“As much, perhaps, as any one; but even that says little.”
“Can you not use it, therefore, to make him repair a great wrong?”
“You had some plan, I think?” said he, hesitatingly.
“Yes; I have written to her to come down here. I have pretended that her presence is necessary to certain formalities about the sale of the villa. I mean that they should meet, without apprising either of them. I have sent the boy out of the way to Pontremoli to make me a copy of some frescoes there; till the success of my scheme be decided, I did not wish to make him a party to it.”
“You don't know Glencore,—at least as I know him.”
“There is no reason that I should,” broke she in. “What I would try is an experiment, every detail of which I would leave to chance. Were this a case where all the wrong were on one side, and all the forgiveness to come from the other, friendly aid and interposition might well be needed; but here is a complication which neither you, nor I, nor any one else can pretend to unravel. Let them meet, therefore, and let Fate—if that be the name for it—decide what all the prevention and planning in the world could never provide for.”
“The very fact that their meeting has been plotted beforehand will suggest distrust.”
“Their manner in meeting will be the best answer to that,” said she, resolutely. “There will be no acting between them, depend upon 't.”