“You might as well say that the sovereign can cure the king’s evil!”
“Well, they say she can?”
“Oh, my dear mother! Can you live in the world and keep such superstitions?”
“You’ve no belief in you!”
“I at least believe enough in true nobility to hold that it is a gift of race and breeding beyond purchase, and uncreatable by any formula.”
“If the Queen makes your father a lord, a lord he will be with the best of them.”
“She can make him a lord; she cannot make him either noble or gentle. His nobility will be a lie, as his armorial bearings are already.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say, Kathleen!”
“It is the truth.”
“Why do I try to reason with her?” she thought. “One might as well try to persuade the stone supporters on the gateway?”