Lucian seemed disturbed and uneasy.
‘Yes—yes—I know!’ he answered hurriedly. ‘I know that’s the right thing to do, but you see, Sprats, Haidee doesn’t wish it, at present at any rate. She—she’s a great heiress, or something, and she says it wouldn’t do. She wishes it to be kept secret until I’m twenty. Everything will be all right then, of course. And it’s awfully easy to arrange stolen meetings at present; there are lots of places about the Castle and in the woods where you can hide.’
‘Like a housemaid and an under-footman,’ remarked Sprats. ’Um—well, I suppose that’s inevitable, too. Of course the earl would never look at you, and it’s very evident that Mrs. Brinklow would be horrified—she wants the Dolly kid to marry into the peerage, and you’re a nobody.’
‘I’m not a nobody!’ said Lucian, waxing furious. ‘I am a gentleman—an Italian gentleman. I am the earl’s equal—I have the blood of the Orsini, the Odescalchi, and the Aldobrandini in my veins! The earl?—why, your English noblemen are made out of tradesfolk—pah! It is but yesterday that they gave a baronetcy to a man who cures bacon, and a peerage to a fellow who brews beer. In Italy we should spit upon your English peers—they have no blood. I have the blood of the Cæsars in me!’
‘Your mother was the daughter of an English farmer, and your father was a macaroni-eating Italian who painted pictures,’ said Sprats, with imperturbable equanimity. ‘You yourself ought to go about with a turquoise cap on your pretty curls, and a hurdy-gurdy with a monkey on the top. Tant pis for your rotten old Italy!—anybody can buy a dukedom there for a handful of centesimi!’
Then they fought, and Lucian was worsted, as usual, and came to his senses, and for the rest of the day Sprats was decent to him and even sympathetic. She was always intrusted with his confidence, however much they differed, and during the rest of the time which Haidee spent at the Castle she had to listen to many ravings, and more than once to endure the reading of a sonnet or a canzonet with which Lucian intended to propitiate the dark-eyed nymph whose image was continually before him. Sprats, too, had to console him on those days whereon no sight of Miss Brinklow was vouchsafed. It was no easy task: Lucian, during these enforced abstinences from love’s delights and pleasures, was preoccupied, taciturn, and sometimes almost sulky.
‘You’re like a bear with a sore head,’ said Sprats, using a homely simile much in favour with the old women of the village. ‘I don’t suppose the Dolly kid is nursing her sorrows like that. I saw Dicky Feversham riding up to the Castle on his pony as I came in from taking old Mother Hobbs’s rice-pudding.’
Lucian clenched his fists. The demon of jealousy was aroused within him for the first time.
‘What do you mean?’ he cried.
‘Don’t mean anything but what I said,’ replied Sprats. ‘I should think Dickie has gone to spend the afternoon there. He’s a nice-looking boy, and as his uncle is a peer of the rel-lum, Mrs. Brinklow doubtless loves him.’