'You decline to call on my wife?' said the earl.
Lady Charlotte replied: 'Understand me, now. If the woman has won you round to legitimize the connection, first, I've a proper claim to see her marriage lines. I must have a certificate of her birth. I must have a testified account of her life before you met her and got the worst of it. Then, as the case may be, I 'll call on her.
'You will behave yourself when you call.'
'But she won't have our family jewels.'
'That affair has been settled by me.'
'I should be expecting to hear of them as decorating the person of one of that man Morsfield's mistresses.'
The earl's brow thickened. 'Charlotte, I smacked your cheek when you were a girl.'
'I know you did. You might again, and I wouldn't cry out. She travels with that Morsfield; you 've seen it. He goes boasting of her. Gypsy or not, she 's got queer ways.'
'I advise you, you had better learn at once to speak of her respectfully.'
'I shall have enough to go through, if what you say's true, with questions of the woman's antecedents and her people, and the date of the day of this marriage. When was the day you did it? I shall have to give an answer. You know cousins of ours, and the way they 'll be pressing, and comparing ages and bawling rumours. None of them imagined my brother such a fool as to be wheedled into marrying her. You say it's done, Rowsley. Was it done yesterday or the day before?'