Angelica looked amazed. "Well, it is your fault as much as anybody's," she burst out when she had recovered herself. "Why don't you make me something of a life? You can't expect me to go on like this forever—getting up in the morning, riding, driving, lessons, dressing, and bed. It's the life of a lapdog."
She got up, and going to one of the windows, which was open, leant out. Dawne and Diavolo followed her. As the former approached, she turned and looked him full in the face for an answer.
"You will marry eventually—" he began.
"Like poor Edith?" she suggested. Dawne compressed his lips. "That was her ideal," Angelica proceeded—"her own home and husband and family, someone to love and trust and look up to. She told me all about it at Fountain Towers under the influence of indignation and strong tea. And she was an exquisite womanly creature! No, thank you! It isn't safe to be an an exquisite womanly creature in this rotten world. The most useful kind of heart for a woman is one hard enough to crack nuts with. Nobody could wring it then."
"You would lose all finer feeling—" Lord Dawne began.
"Including the heartache itself," she supplemented.
"But what do you want?" he asked.
"An object," she answered. "Something! something! something beyond the mere getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, with an interval of exercise between. I want to do something for somebody!"
Lord Dawne raised his eyebrows slightly. He had no idea that such a notion had ever entered her head.
At this point, a servant was sent by his Grace to request the twins to be so good as to go to him in the library at once.