“And I, sir, believe them because they are so beautiful.”
“Oh, girl, if you were what you should be, Countess of Tönsberg and Princess of Wollin, surrounded, as you would be, by a swarm of handsome traitors and selfish adorers, such credulity would be most dangerous.”
“It is not credulity, my lord and father, but confidence.”
“It is easy to see, Ethel, that there is French blood in your veins.”
This idea led the old man, by an imperceptible transition, to a different train of thought, and he added, with a certain complacency:—
“For those who degraded your father to a point lower yet than that from which he had raised himself, cannot deny that you are the daughter of Charlotte, Princess of Tarentum, or that one of your ancestresses was Adela (or Edila), Countess of Flanders, whose name you bear.”
Ethel’s mind was running on quite other things.
“Father, you misjudge the noble Ordener.”
“Noble, my daughter! What do you mean by that? I have made men noble who proved themselves very vile.”
“I do not mean, sir, that his nobility is of the kind conferred by man.”