“Wench, I can dismiss my servants when I please, thieves or not thieves.”
In addition to the claims of justice Aline felt a definite feeling of antagonism rising in her, a touch of the fighting instinct. “Of course you can do as you please,” she said, “but that does not make it fair.”
“I tell you Edward shall go; he is getting too old and that is enough reason.”
“Richard,” she continued, “am I mistress of this house or is that skelpie? The man is only a servant and I can treat him as I like. I am within my rights.”
Aline could not resist going on, yet she hated the whole thing; she felt that her attitude was unbecoming, if not impertinent; but she could not let Edward go without a struggle, nor could she abandon a fight which she had once begun; that was not human nature. “You may be within your rights,” she said, “and he may be only a servant; but that is just it;—if you belonged to the servant class yourself that sort of reason might be enough, but ‘noblesse oblige’ as father used to tell me. That is so, is it not, Cousin Richard? and we must investigate the case before Edward is sent away.”
Eleanor Mowbray flushed crimson; Aline had found the weak spot in her armour. The vintner’s daughter was not a lady, but the one thing in life that she desired was to be thought one.
“Yes, child,” said Master Richard, for the remark had touched his proper pride. “Yes, keeping within his rights is good enough for common people. But gentle blood demands more than rights. It has higher standards altogether. It is a matter of honour, not of rights. Many things are right but they are not honourable. The churl does not know the meaning of honour. By my troth, lassie, you remind me of my mother’s father, the Duke of Morpeth, who used to say that aristocracy was the pride of humility, the pride that could not be demeaned by humbling itself, the pride that could not lower itself by standing on its rights. Our Lord, he used to say, was the noblest knight and the first gentleman of chivalry. Ah, little maid,” he went on, “you must forgive me my reminiscences; the serious things of life cannot be left out.”
“No, Cousin Richard, I’m listening.”