"Oh, that sort of thing doesn't hurt much," Diavolo declared.
"It does hurt," she maintained aggressively; "and pain is pain, whether the seat of it be your head, heart, or hind-quarters."
"Angelica!" Lady Fulda exclaimed with tragic emphasis. "Someone must really talk to you seriously! you are positively vulgar!"
"Thank Heaven!" Angelica ejaculated fervently. "I knew I was going to be something!"
She get up as she spoke, and walked out of the room with her head in the air, affecting a proud consciousness of having had greatness suddenly thrust upon her.
Lady Fulda looked helplessly, first at Father Ricardo, then at Mr. Ellis.
"Can't you do something?" she said to the latter.
Mr. Ellis replied by an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. "We know better than to interfere when she's in one of her bad-language tantrums," Diavolo explained.
When his grandfather left the table, he followed him uninvited on a tour of inspection around the castle and grounds, and, finally, retiring with him to the library, whither the old duke usually went to rest, read, or meditate sometime during the morning, he coiled himself up in an armchair, took a small book out of his pocket, and began to study it dilligently.
His grandfather glanced at him affectionately and with interest, from time to time. He was lonely in his old age, and liked to have the boy about. He had nobody left to him now who could touch his heart or take him out of himself as Diavolo did, for nobody else attached themselves to him in the same way, or showed such an unaffected preference for having him all to themselves,