“She was welcome to tell him that!” the Princess exclaimed.
“His reasoning, therefore, has been that when I find you have nothing more to give to the cause I will let you go.”
“Nothing more? And does he count me, myself, and every pulse of my being, every capacity of my nature, as nothing?” the Princess cried, with shining eyes.
“Apparently he thinks that I do.”
“Oh, as for that, after all, I have known that you care far more for my money than for me. But it has made no difference to me,” said the Princess.
“Then you see that by your own calculation the Prince is right.”
“My dear sir,” Muniment’s hostess replied, “my interest in you never depended on your interest in me. It depended wholly on a sense of your great destinies. I suppose that what you began to tell me is that he stops my allowance.”
“From the first of next month. He has taken legal advice. It is now clear—so he tells me—that you forfeit your settlements.”
“Can I not take legal advice, too?” the Princess asked. “Surely I can contest that. I can forfeit my settlements only by an act of my own. The act that led to our separation was his act; he turned me out of his house by physical violence.”
“Certainly,” said Muniment, displaying even in this simple discussion his easy aptitude for argument; “but since then there have been acts of your own—” He stopped a moment, smiling; then he went on: “Your whole connection with a secret society constitutes an act, and so does your exercise of the pleasure, which you appreciate so highly, of feeding it with money extorted from an old Catholic and princely family. You know how little it is to be desired that these matters should come to light.”