"The Prince?" asked Mary.
Ermyntrude sank back on to her pillows, and groped for the smelling-salts. "He couldn't remain silent any longer," she said simply. "He has struggled, but when he saw - when he realised the life I lead, the way Wally treats me, flesh and blood wouldn't stand it! He spoke! Oh, Mary dear, when I think that if things had been different I might have been Princess Varasashvili, it seems as though I just can't bear it!"
Mary was silent for a moment, but presently she said: "Well, why don't you divorce Wally, Aunt Ermy?"
Ermyntrude had cast an anguished arm across her eyes, but she lowered it at this, and replied with a note of sound common sense in her voice: "Divorce Wally, on account of this Baker hussy? I'm not such a fool!"
"You needn't cite her as the co-respondent. It could be an unknown woman, couldn't it?"
"Catch Wally doing anything so obliging!" said Ermyntrude caustically. "Of course he wouldn't! And what would I look like, cut out by a cheap little Well, we'll leave it at that, for I'm sure I've no wish to soil my lips with what she is! Besides, look what harm it would do my Vicky, if I was to go and get a divorce!"
"I don't really see why it should."
"I dare say you don't, but I wasn't born yesterday, and I know what people are! Goodness knows the right people look down on me enough without my giving them something fresh to turn up their noses at!"
"Oh!" cried Mary, moved for the first time during this scene, "you mustn't think that sort of thing, Aunt Ermy! If people look down on you, you can be sure they aren't the right people, and send them to the devil!"
"That's all very well for you, dearie: you've had education," said Ermyntrude. "I can't afford to send people to the devil, though I don't deny I've often been tempted to. Funny, isn't it, when you think how I could buy up the Derings and the Bawtrys, and all the rest of them, and never notice it? Oh well! there's no use repining, as they say. But there's one thing I'm determined on, and always have been, and that is that there's never going to be any sneering at my Vicky. She's been brought up a lady, and her father was a real gentleman, and whatever else I may have been, I've always been respectable, and no one can say different!"