"It has everything to do with you," said Lady Ipsen quickly; "don't I tell you that Saltars, since he saw you at that Mrs. Palmer's, has taken a fancy to you? It would take very little for you to detach him from this wretched Miss Lorry."
"I don't want to, Lady Ipsen!"
"Call me grandmother."
"No. You have never been a grandmother to me. I will be now," Lady Ipsen tried to soften her grim face; "I wish I'd seen you before," she added, "you're a true Delham, with very little of that bad Strode blood in you, unless in the obstinacy you display. I'll take you away from this Mrs. Palmer, Eva----"
"I have no wish to leave Mrs. Palmer."
"You must. I won't have a granddaughter of mine remain in a situation with a common woman."
"Leave Mrs. Palmer alone, Lady Ipsen. She is a good woman, and when my relatives forsook me she took me up. If you had ever loved me, or desired to behave as you should have done, you would have come to help me when my father was murdered. And now," cried Eva, rising with flashing eyes, "you come when I am settled, to get me to help you with your schemes. I decline."
The old woman, very white and with glittering eyes, rose. "You intend then to marry Allen Hill?"
"Yes, I do."
"Well then, you can't," snapped the old woman; "his mother isn't respectable."