“Ah, you have anticipated me: I shall want that picture,” said Lionel, with assumed indifference; “but imagine a bailiff’s daughter setting her heart upon the next heir to the earldom of Verner, and making her brother a spy upon him lest he should lose too much money at cards. By Jove, Arthur, it was an impudent thing to do.”
“Did she do it?”
“Did she? Of course she did. Why, the impudent young blackguard told me who he was, as if he had some claim upon me.”
“And so he had, if he was warning you against conspirators.”
“Look at it in that light, perhaps he had; but what about the other view?”
“She is a fine, handsome girl, Miss Somerton, and accomplished; she’s fit for the wife of a prince,” said Arthur, in his quiet, emphatic manner.
“Why, what radicalism you are talking! Marry a bailiff’s daughter to a prince?”
“A prince might be proud of such a wife as Amy Somerton. You have not seen so much of her as I have, and you may rely upon it you have wronged her.”
“She’s an impudent, meddling baggage, Arthur—a presumptuous, designing woman,” said Lionel, with an angry flash of the eye.
“I don’t think so, indeed,” said Arthur.