“He has married her merely to pass this insult on me!” she said with tears which burnt her eyes like fire.
“That is scarcely probable, my beloved,” said Prince Woffram gently; “the lady is not noble, it is true; but then you have great license in these matters in Great Britain. Your Heralds’ Office is practically a box of puppets.”
“I cannot see,” he repeated, “why you should be thus affected. The lady was much admired in London; she had great musical talent. I remember my cousins——”
“Great musical talent!” echoed Mouse bitterly. “Whilst she had her money, of course, they gave her every talent under heaven!”
She heard in memory the harsh, rude voice of Massarene saying of her own songs:
“She says yours is bad amatoor music, my lady!”
Oh, how she hated the creature! And to think she was now mistress of Faldon!
Katherine Massarene mistress of Faldon! It seemed to her an outrage too intolerable to be borne!
She had never cared to go to Faldon since the time of her marriage to Cocky; she had always railed against it as the dullest, wildest, and most out-of-the-way place upon earth. She would have perished of ennui if she had been forced to pass a week there between its ancient woods and its solitary seas; but for all that it was the cradle of her race, the home of her childhood, the house of her mother. To think of “Billy’s daughter” as reigning there was an utterly unendurable insult! And the bust by Dalou and the portrait by Orchardson were no doubt gone there already, and were impudently taking their place in the gallery where the women of her race were portrayed and where her own portrait as a child, painted by Millais, hung in the light of the setting sun!
“I cannot see what it matters,” repeated Prince Woffram, turning a telescope placed on the balustrade above the tea-roses on to a distant passing yacht.