"Of declining a peerage, were it offered to me. Yes."
Windeg was utterly disconcerted, a thing which rarely happened to him. "Well then, I must beg of you to give me your reasons for this, to use a mild term, very singular refusal. I am extremely anxious to hear them."
Arthur looked across at his wife. She had started as he spoke, and the deep flush had again mounted hotly to her cheeks. Their eyes met, and they gazed for a second at each other, but the young man found in his wife's face no inducement to yield. He answered with a decided ring of defiance in his voice.
"My refusal is less singular than the proposal, as it is made to me. Had a title been conferred on my father, on account of the services he has indisputably rendered to the industry of the country, I, as his heir, should have joined in accepting it. Such a recognition is honourable as any other. It has not been thought fit to grant it to him, and I, of course, am no judge as to the prejudices which may stand in the way. But, for my part, I have not the very smallest claim to such a distinction, and therefore I think it better not to set afloat a report in the city that a connection by marriage with the Windeg family will necessarily imply a peerage."
He let fall the last words very quietly, but Eugénie pressed her lips angrily together. She knew he meant them for her alone. Was he bent on freeing himself from everything that could justify her contempt? Her wish to feel such contempt was stronger than ever.
"I seem indeed to have been in error as to the motives which led you to desire our connection," said the Baron slowly, "but I must confess I was not prepared to find that you held such views. They must be of somewhat recent date, for, before your marriage, you appeared to entertain quite different ideas."
"Before my marriage!" A smile of infinite bitterness played about Arthur's lips. "I was somewhat ignorant then as to the way in which I myself and my position in society were looked upon in the upper circles. This has since been clearly pointed out to me in a rather unsparing fashion, and you can therefore hardly feel surprise that I should renounce all idea of forcing my way into them as an unwished-for intruder."
Eugénie's fingers closed tightly round the rose which she had drawn out of the vase and was still holding in her hand. The tender flower shared the fate her fan had lately met with in Arthur's grasp; it fell crushed to the ground. Arthur did not notice it, he had now almost turned his back on her and stood facing her father, who stared as though in doubt as to whether it really were his son-in-law he saw before him.
"I cannot, of course, divine who may have made such very exaggerated disclosures to you," he replied gravely, "but I do beg of you in this matter to have some consideration for Eugénie. The rôle she will, in all probability, have to play in the city this winter makes it impossible for her--excuse me, Herr Berkow--impossible, I say, for her to bear a middle-class name. That was never intended either by your father or by me."
Arthur looked again at his wife long and sternly. She still took no part in the conversation, interfering by no single word, though she generally knew right well how to make her views known and her will felt.