Randolph brought his teeth together, but he answered: “All’s fair in love. Moreover, if I were entirely out of the question, I should study your interests as I should those of my sister. You are not married yet. Think it over carefully before he comes back.”
“Do you suppose I’d break my engagement? I’ve given him my word, and it’s announced.”
“If you had engaged yourself to me before Maundrell came, would you not have thrown me over?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Your femininity is your greatest charm—to me. Its somewhat anarchistic quality may not commend itself to Cecil Maundrell. Better think it over.”
“You can plot all you like, but I’d marry Cecil Maundrell if he went after grizzlies every month in the year.”
She had passed through several phases since that morning, when she had risen at four to see her future lord depart. The strong passion of her nature responded with sensuous delight to the heavy hand of the master; she was primal woman first, and American after. But she was American “all the same,” she reminded herself with a proper pride. She was willing to excuse Cecil from buttoning her boots, but she would have liked him to manifest a natural desire to kiss her slipper. Of the strength of his passion she had no misgivings, but she was too clear-sighted to permit herself to hope that idolatry had any part in it. And if she had a primal instinct for submission to the worshipped strength of the male, she had quite as strong an instinct for her own way. Not only had the conditions of her life fostered a tenacious will, but she inherited a love of power and adulation from a mother and a grandmother to whom the neck of man was a familiar footstool.
Two days later Tiny arrived with Lord Arrowmount and the Honourable Charles Edward Richard Thornton, the last in the arms of his nurse. Tiny was as pretty and as placid as ever, and Lord Arrowmount, if not so pretty, was quite as placid, and as silent as of yore. The note of command was not manifest in his voice, and it was evident that he was not on the alert.
“Have you adapted yourself?” asked Lee that night.
Tiny smiled her old inscrutable smile. “He thinks I have, so it amounts to quite the same thing.”