'Why not? It is an amiable relationship.'
She flung away in anger at that. But only to return again on the morrow to invite his sympathy and his consolation, neither of which he was prepared to afford her. Her wooing of him grew so flagrant, so reckless in its assaults upon the defences behind which he entrenched himself, that one day he boldly sallied forth to rout her in open conflict.
'What do you seek of me that my Lord Count cannot give you?' he demanded. 'Your grievance against him is that he will not make you a duchess. Your desire in life is to become a duchess. Can I make you that if he cannot?'
But it was he, himself, who was routed by the counterattack.
'How you persist in misunderstanding me! If I desire of him that he make me a duchess, it is because it is the only thing that he can make me. Cheated of love, must I be cheated also of ambition?'
'Which do you rate more highly?'
She raised that perfect ivory-coloured face, from which the habitual insolent languor had now all been swept; her deep blue eyes held nothing but entreaty and submission.
'That must depend upon the man who brings it.'
'To the best of his ability my Lord Facino has brought you both.'
'Facino! Facino!' she cried out in sudden petulance. 'Must you always be thinking of Facino?'