“What satire can be so withering as such a statement? There is then no love of hereditary lands, no sense of woodland beauty, no interest in fur or feather without slaughter attached to them, no tenderness for tradition and for nature? Nothing, nothing whatever, of such pride in and affection for the soil itself as Shakspeare felt, who only owned a little rural freehold? Who can condemn you as utterly as you condemn yourselves?”
“I think we are rather useful sometimes,” he said humbly.
“Oh, very! You vote against marriage with a deceased wife’s sister and maintain the game laws!
“I am not ashamed of my parents’ origin, Lord Framlingham, I assure you,” she added after a pause. “I am ashamed that they are ashamed of it.”
“I understand, my dear, and I sympathize, though I suppose not many people would do either. You see, we all have our crosses. My daughters have to endure the misery of a conspicuous rank with wholly inadequate means—a more trying position than you can imagine.”
“I should not mind that.”
“Oh, yes, you would. It is humiliation at every turn. It is to be checked in every generous impulse, to spend half your time in efforts to make a five-pound note do the work of ten sovereigns; it is to wear your George and Garter over a ragged shirt, and knock your diamond tiara against the roof of a hackney cab. I know what I am talking about, my dear, as most unhappy English land-owners do in this year of grace. I know that there is no misery so accursed as the combination of high place and narrow means. I came out here to relieve the strain a little. It was worse for the women than for me. You, my dear, are a high-mettled pony which kicks at carrying the money-bags. But my poor girls are high-mettled ponies which sweat under the halter and the cobble. That’s a good deal worse. You’ll have to buy a fine name with your big dower. But they will have to take what offers first, for they must go to their husbands portionless, or nearly so. And we were Thanes in Alfred’s time, my dear, and we fought for Harold tooth and nail, and we were at Runnymede, and at Bosworth, and at Tewkesbury, and all the rest of it, and our name is as old as the very hills round the Wrekin; and that, you see, is what an ancient lineage is worth in these days. Your father has the better part.”
Katherine shook her head.
“And honor?” she said in a low tone.
Lord Framlingham laughed grimly.