“When I came back I told her to await my good pleasure. I myself was waiting for this moment, Ursula. God only knows how I have waited for it, hoped for it—” He broke off.
“Then be thankful it has come,” she answered, in the bitterness of her righteous abandonment.
“Yes, it has come. And now there is nothing else to say?”
“No, there is nothing else to say.”
She fancied she caught a strange flicker in his firmly fixed eyes.
“And of what use will the Manor-house be to a poor beggar like myself?” he went on. “You had much better have kept it—you, who are rich.”
She flushed scarlet under the taunt.
“May I go?” she asked, almost meekly, under the pain at her heart. “You will do what you like with the Manor. Perhaps you will sell it. Though Helena van Troyen tells me you are going to marry a rich wife of her choosing—and your own.”
“Did Helena van Troyen tell you that?” he asked, uncrossing his arms, and the brightness of his nature seemed to come flowing back from all sides.