“I am only fulfilling the mandate given in—in your wife’s last letter.”
“My wife. You admit, then, that she was my wife?”
Power did not answer, and Marten tingled with the quick suspicion that he was opening up the very line of inquiry in which he was most vulnerable.
“Anyhow, let us endeavor to forget what happened twenty years ago,” he went on, affecting a generosity of sentiment he was far from feeling. “What I wish to understand is this—how do you reconcile your regret, or repentance, or whatever you choose to call it, for bygone deeds, with your attempt now to come between me and my daughter. Yes, damn you, whatever you may say or do, you cannot rob me of the nineteen years of affection which at least one person in the world has given me!”
Power passed unheeded that sudden flame of passionate resentment.
“It is natural, in a sense, that you should misread the actual course of events,” he said. “You may not be aware that I have been a constant visitor to this part of Devonshire during many years, and that, in hiring Valescure, you were really seeking me instead of me, as you imagine, seeking you. I met Nancy by accident. We became friends. It was the impulse of a girl deprived of the one adviser in whom she should have complete trust that led her to confide in me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You, her loved and honored father, were using your authority to force her into a hated marriage.”
“I didn’t treat matters so seriously. I never heard of this young Lindsay as a candidate before last week.”
“Had you taken a tenth part of the trouble it has cost me, you would have ascertained that the Principe del Montecastello was about as suitable a mate for Nancy as a carrion crow for a linnet.”