Though she forced herself to be civil to Gilbert Speid, and felt no actual enmity towards him, everything to do with him was hateful to her. Cecilia, whom she loved as a daughter, and to whom she clung more closely with each passing year, would be cut off from her, not in love nor in gratitude, as she knew well enough, but by the barrier of such surroundings as she, Lady Eliza, could never induce herself to penetrate. That house from which, as she passed its gates, she was wont to avert her face, would be Cecilia’s home. For some time she had been schooling herself to the idea of their parting. When Crauford’s laborious courtship had ended in failure, she had been glad; but, in comparison to this new suitor, she would have welcomed him with open arms. He had a blameless character, an even temper, excellent prospects, and no distance to which he could have transported Cecilia would divide them so surely as the few miles which separated Morphie from Whanland. She would hear her called ‘Mrs. Speid’; she would probably see her the mother of children in whose veins ran the blood of the woman she abhorred. The tempest of her feelings stifled all justice and all reason.
‘Why did you not take Crauford Fordyce, if your heart was set on leaving me?’ she cried.
The thrust pierced Cecilia like a knife, but she knew that it was not the real Lady Eliza who had dealt it.
‘I did not care for him,’ she replied, ‘and I love Gilbert Speid.’
‘He is not Gilbert Speid!’ burst out her companion; ‘he is no more Speid than you are! He is nothing of the sort; he is an impostor—a man of no name!’
‘An impostor, ma’am?’
‘His mother was a bad woman. I would rather see you dead than married to him! If you wanted to break my heart, Cecilia, you could not have taken a better way of doing it.’
‘Do you mean that he is not Mr. Speid’s son?’ said Cecilia, her face the colour of a sheet of paper.
‘Yes, I do. He has no business in that house; he has no right to be here; his whole position is a shameful pretence and a lie.’
‘But Whanland is his. He has every right to be there, ma’am.’