He shrugged his shoulders. "I do deprecate this tone," he repeated. "I come in plain English to make you an offer; one which you can accept or refuse as you please. I offer you five hundred a year for this house. It is immensely too large for your needs, and too expensive for your income, and yet you have in strictness no power to let it. Very well, I, who can release you from that restriction, offer you five hundred a year for the house. What can be more fair?"
"Fair? In plain English, Lord Wetherby, you are the only possible purchaser, and you fix the price. Is that fair? The house would let easily for twelve hundred."
"Possibly," he retorted, "if it were in the open market. But it is not."
"No," she answered rapidly. "And you, having the forty thousand a year which, had my husband lived, would have been his and mine; you who, a poor man, have stepped into this inheritance--you offer me five hundred for the family house! For shame, my lord! for shame!"
"We are not acting a play," he said doggedly, showing that her words had stung him in some degree. "The law is the law. I ask for nothing but my rights, and one of those I am willing to waive in your favor. You have my offer."
"And if I refuse it? If I let the house? You will not dare to enforce the restriction."
"Try me," he rejoined, again drumming with his fingers upon the table. "Try me, and you will see."
"If my husband had lived----"
"But he did not live," he broke in, losing patience, "and that makes all the difference. Now, for Heaven's sake, Mrs. Wigram, do not make a scene! Do you accept my offer?"
For a moment she had seemed about to break down, but her pride coming to the rescue, she recovered herself with wonderful quickness.