"I didn't mean any harm, mother." He crossed over to her and sat down beside her. "I say, Daphne, I've got an idea. Why shouldn't mother have them? She's going to take a house, she says. Let's hand them all over to her!"
Lady Barnes's lips trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who were born and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showed the stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be a sacrilege to move them."
"Well then, let's move ourselves!" exclaimed Daphne, springing up. "We can let this house again, can't we, Roger?"
"We can, I suppose," said Roger, munching his bread and butter; "but we're not going to."
He raised his head and looked quietly at her.
"I think we'd better!" The tone was imperious. Daphne, with her thin arms and hands locked behind her, paused beside her husband.
Dr. Lelius, stealthily raising his eyes, observed the two. A strange little scene—not English at all. The English, he understood, were a phlegmatic people. What had this little Southerner to do among them? And what sort of fellow was the husband?
It was evident that some mute coloquy passed between the husband and wife—disapproval on his part, attempt to assert authority, defiance, on hers. Then the fair-skinned English face, confronting Daphne, wavered and weakened, and Roger smiled into the eyes transfixing him.
"Ah!" thought Lelius, "she has him, de poor fool!"
Roger, coming over to his mother, began a murmured conversation. Daphne, still breathing quick, consented to talk to Dr. Lelius and Mrs. French. Lelius, who travelled widely, had brought her news of some pictures in a chateau of the Bourbonnais—pictures that her whole mind was set on acquiring. Elsie French noticed the expertise of her talk; the intellectual development it implied; the passion of will which accompanied it. "To the dollar, all things are possible"—one might have phrased it so.