“Never—she shall never come here!” said Marion, with flashing eyes; “a common squaw, with greasy hair, and blankets, and big mouth, and black teeth, who eats with her fingers and grunts! If she does, if she is brought to Greyhope, I will never show my face in the world again. Frank married the animal: why does he ship her home to us? Why didn’t he come with her? Why does he not take her to a home of his own? Why should he send her here, to turn our house into a menagerie?”
Marion drew her skirt back, as if the common squaw, with her blankets and grease, was at that moment near her.
“Well, you see,” continued Richard, “that is just it. As I said, Frank arranged this little complication with a trifling amount of malice. No doubt he didn’t come with her because he wished to test the family loyalty and hospitality; but a postscript to this letter says that his solicitor has instructions to meet his wife at Liverpool, and bring her on here in case we fail to show her proper courtesy.”
General Armour here spoke. “He has carried the war of retaliation very far indeed, but men do mad things when their blood is up, as I have seen often. That doesn’t alter our clear duty in the matter. If the woman were bad, or shameful, it would be a different thing; if—”
Marion interrupted: “She has ridden bareback across the continent like a jockey,—like a common jockey, and she wears a blanket, and she doesn’t know a word of English, and she will sit on the floor!”
“Well,” said her father, “all these things are not sins, and she must be taught better.”
“Joseph, how can you?” said Mrs. Armour indignantly. “She cannot, she shall not come here. Think of Marion. Think of our position.”
She hid her troubled, tear-stained face behind her handkerchief. At the same time she grasped her husband’s hand. She knew that he was right. She honoured him in her heart for the position he had taken, but she could not resist the natural impulse of a woman where her taste and convention were shocked.
The old man was very pale, but there was no mistaking his determination. He had been more indignant than any of them, at first, but he had an unusual sense of justice when he got face to face with it, as Richard had here helped him to do. “We do not know that the woman has done any wrong,” he said. “As for our name and position, they, thank God! are where a mad marriage cannot unseat them. We have had much prosperity in the world, my wife; we have had neither death nor dishonour; we—”
“If this isn’t dishonour, father, what is?” Marion flashed out.