“Dearest, what is this that you are saying?”
“It is true,” she answered, smiling at his incredulity, “that he wanted to marry her, and would, but for some treachery on the part of Miss Helen Capel, who is now Lady Randal, I believe; and poor auntie loved him till the last minute of her life.”
“Who told you of this?”
“Auntie herself, the very day she died, and the jewels which Isabel Coolidge has were, most of them, given to her in honor of her approaching marriage with his lordship.”
More and more amazed, Adrian was now eager to hear the whole story, and Brownie, nothing loth, went over the whole ground, and then proved her position by reminding him of Lord Dunforth’s recognition of the jewels she wore the night she attended the opera.
When she had concluded, he said, with a little touch of triumph in his tone:
“I think, Mrs. Dredmond, that we are about to turn the table upon my proud-spirited grandsire finely, and we will prove to him that there is such a thing as being ‘more nice than wise.’”
With which trite quotation he immediately sat down and wrote out a complete history of Miss Mehetabel Douglas and Brownie, and dispatched it at once to Lord Dunforth, feeling assured that this explanation would make everything all right, and bring his lordship to them in rather a more humble frame of mind than when he last saw him.
His chagrin can be imagined when the epistle was returned to him unopened, and without a word, thus showing that henceforth he wished no communication with him; and while his indignation for the moment got the better of him, he was still deeply grieved to be thus alienated from his grandfather in his old age.
But Brownie, all her pride aroused to arms, vowed within herself that the haughty earl should yet sue for her favor.