"You may have an opinion but you are not entitled to express it in my house," he answered, still more irritated by her manner; "you can wait for that till you have a house of your own, a thing which appears to me very problematical, since no man would care to have an upsetting, conceited young woman as a wife with no fortune, or looks, or any single recommendation."
Grace was pale with anger. Margaret turned upon him like a young lioness.
"How can you say such unkind, such untrue things?" she exclaimed passionately. "Oh! Grace, my darling, do not heed him."
"I do not heed him," said Grace, magnificently, wounded and stung beyond belief, and quivering with passion, "but I want to know why you keep us in your house, hating us so evidently—we will not stay, we will go. You offered us a home, and now you speak as though we were a burden. We will go, Margaret."
"Speak for yourself, I offered you a home for the sake of one I loved. I did not know you then. When I saw what you were, I still kept that home open to you for the sake of your sister; you put yourself above her in everything, you have made her believe you her superior in all things, but she is worth a dozen of you, and so every man in his senses will think as they know you."
Grace was in tears by this time, and Margaret tried to get her to go out of the room, but she was struggling forwards, she would not go till she had said something, and she meant the last word to be very cutting.
"Brother," said Mrs. Dorriman, imploringly, "you are wrong; you are saying things now in the heat of passion that you will be sorry for afterwards. It is hard to be obliged to eat the bread of dependence, and to have it cast up to you."
"It is her own fault," he said, angrily; "she gives herself airs and graces as though she were above the ground she treads upon. It makes me ill the way she goes on, and she must hear it!"
"Spare her now."
"Oh! I'll spare her, but she has to lower her head; even Drayton would have nothing to say to her, though I did my best, and praised her up to the skies when I spoke to him."