"Specially blessed," he repeats. "I had reason to be proud of them. Each child as he or she married gave me fresh cause for joy. Marcia's mother was an Italian dancer."
"She was an actress," Marcia interposes, calmly, not a line of displeasure, not the faintest trace of anger, discernible in her pale face. "I do not recollect having ever heard she danced."
"Probably she suppressed that fact. It hardly adds to one's respectability. Philip's father was a spendthrift. His son develops day by day a very dutiful desire to follow in his footsteps."
"Perhaps I might do worse," Shadwell replies, with a little aggravating laugh. "At all events, he was beloved."
"So he was,—while his money lasted. Eleanor's father——"
With a sudden, irrepressible start Molly rises to her feet and, with a rather white face, turns to her grandfather.
"I will thank you, grandpapa, to say nothing against my father," she says, in tones so low, yet so full of dignity and indignation, that the old man actually pauses.
"High tragedy," says he, with a sneer. "Why, you are all wrongly assorted. The actress should have been your mother, Eleanor."
Yet it is noticeable that he makes no further attempt to slight the memory of the dead Massereene.
"I shan't be able to stand much more of this," says Mr. Potts, presently, coming behind the lounge on which sit Lady Stafford and Molly. "I shall infallibly blow out at that obnoxious old person, or else do something equally reprehensible."