Percival stared at him for a moment, and then leapt to his feet. "It isn't true!" he exclaimed.
"Indeed! And why not?" said Horace. "If I may ask—"
"Lottie do anything underhand! Lottie! It can't be true!"
"You're very kind, but Lottie doesn't want your championship, thank you," said Horace with an angry sneer. "No doubt you find it very incredible that she should prefer mine."
"Oh, by all means, if it suits her," scoffed Percival, and sat down again, feeling stunned, robbed and duped.
"And as to anything underhand—" Horace began fiercely.
Aunt Harriet, scared by the menacing clash of words, uttered a faint little cry.
"Percival! Horace!" said Godfrey Hammond, "you forget what day this is—you forget Mrs. Middleton. For God's sake don't quarrel before her!—Horace, is this really true? Is Lottie your wife?"
"Yes," said the young man, turning quickly toward him: there was a sudden light of tenderness in his glance—"since last November." He paused, and then added softly, "the third," as if the date were something sacred. "Hammond, you know her: you know how young she is—only eighteen this month. If you choose to blame any one, blame me. And I'm not ashamed of what I've done." He looked defiantly round. "I'm proud of having won her; and as to my having concealed it, I ask you, in common fairness, what else could I do? My grandfather used to be very good to me, but of late he was set against me." A quick glance at Percival, who smiled loftily. "Whatever I did was wrong. If I'd told him I was going to marry a princess, it wouldn't have satisfied him. Since this time last year I've hardly had a good word. I've been watched and lectured, and treated like an outsider here, in my own home. You know it's true, and you know to whom I owe it. I never expected to have my rights: I thought my grandfather would have no peace till I was driven out of Brackenhill. And even now I can't understand how it is that I am master here." Percival smiled again, to himself this time. "But Lottie was willing to share my poverty—God bless her!—and I won't let an hour go by without owning my wife. I should be ashamed of myself if I did."
Horace paused, not unconscious of the weakness of his position, yet more like the Horace of old days to look at—flushed, with a happy loyalty in his eyes and his proud head high in the air.