"I want your oath," she retorted. "Swear on this, to aid me to marry Felix, or I do nothing."
There was no help for it, and Prelice had to make allowance for Madame Marie's flamboyant, foreign way of exaggeration. "I swear to help you," he said, and kissed the crucifix.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
THE UNEXPECTED.
"Don't talk nonsense to me," cried Lady Sophia, rapping the dinner-table with her lorgnette. "The idea is too ridiculous for words. To marry a girl out of gaol? Monstrous! Your father would turn in his grave, and he wasn't very particular."
Lord Prelice was dining with his lively relative, when this speech was made at the tail-end of a very excellent meal. Haken had duly returned from Paris on the day after the interview of Prelice with Dr. Horace and his two friends. On finding a note from his nephew stating that he desired to speak on an important subject, Mr. Haken had responded with a wire inviting the young man to dinner. Lady Sophia had also arrived in town from Folkstone, and explained to Prelice, when he appeared, that she would do nothing for Mona. This remark led to a request for explanations, which Lady Sophia was only too anxious to afford, and the presence of footmen and butler at the dinner-table alone kept her from raging at Prelice all the time he was eating. Haken, looking more dried-up than ever, sat at the foot of the table—his wife invariably took the top—and chuckled at intervals. He had not yet heard what Prelice wished to speak about, and was waiting until Lady Sophia retired to the drawing-room, a thing she seemed disinclined to do at present, so rabid was she against her nephew.
Having made the above remark, she waited for a reply; but as Prelice merely crumbled what was left of his bread, and said nothing, she launched out again with a peremptory question. "Do you, or do you not, wish your father to turn in his grave?"
"My dear aunt," replied Prelice very distinctly, "I wish the corpse to take the position it finds the most comfortable."
"Oh!" cried Lady Sophia, outraged in her deepest feelings, "oh, that I should live to hear my late brother called an 'it.' Have you no reverence, Prelice?"
"Not so much reverence, as I have patience," he replied, very bored.