The little man strutted up and down the room in a fume of indignation, and evidently felt fully justified in his own esteem. Ever selfish and vain, he fancied that he had been the victim of a cruel fate, and he read the sheer bewilderment in Alec's face as a tribute to the master stroke he had just delivered.
But his self conceit wilted under the contemptuous scorn of his wife's gaze, which he chanced to meet when his posturing ceased.
Alec looked to his mother for some confirmation or denial of the astounding statement blurted forth by her husband. But she had no eyes for her son then. The wrongs and sufferings of a lifetime were welling up from her heart to her lips. The agonized suspense of the last few minutes had given way to the frenzy of a woman outraged in her deepest sentiments.
She relinquished the chair to which she had been clinging, and faced the diminutive Prince with a quiet dignity that overawed him.
"So that is how you keep your oath, Michael!" she said. "When I forgave your infidelities, when I pandered to your extravagance, when I allowed you to fritter away the wealth bequeathed to me by a man whose fine nature was so far removed from yours that I have often wondered why God created two such opposite types of humanity, time and again you vowed that the idle folly of my youth would never be revealed by you. Twice you swore it on your knees when I was stung beyond endurance by your baseness. No, Michael," and her voice rose almost to a scream when her husband tried to silence her with a curse, "you shall hear the truth now, if I have to ask my son as a last favor to his unhappy mother to still that foul tongue of yours by force!"
For an instant, she made a wild appeal to Alec. "Your father was an honorable man," she cried. "For his sake, if not for mine, since I have forfeited all claim to your love, compel this man to be silent!"
The belief was slowly establishing itself in her son's mind that the incredible thing he was hearing was actually true. Nevertheless, he was temporarily bereft of the poise and balance of judgment that might have enabled him to adjust the warring elements in his bewildered brain. It was a new and horrible experience to be asked by his mother to use physical violence against the man he had been taught to regard as his father.
He had never respected Michael Delgrado,—he could acknowledge that now without the twinge of conscience that had always accompanied the unpleasing thought in the past,—yet, despite the gulf already yawning wide between them, his soul revolted against the notion of laying a hand on him in anger.
But he did stoop over the spluttering little Prince and said sternly, "You must not interrupt my mother again! You must not, I tell you!"
Such was the chilling emphasis of his words that Delgrado's loud objurgations died away in his throat, and the distraught Princess, with one last look of unutterable contempt at her royal spouse, faced the other occupants of the room.