Richard burst forth into manly indignation.
“Jilian, who told you all these lies?”
Miss Hardacre sighed and began to finger her handkerchief.
“I don’t think I ought to say, Richard.”
“It was Aunt Letitia. I’ll swear it was Aunt Letitia. Damn the old woman, Jilian, I absolutely hate her!”
“Richard! Richard!”
“Then it was Aunt Letitia?”
“She was very cruel to me, Richard.”
“On my honor, cousin, I’ll go back and turn her out of my house.”
Here came Miss Hardacre’s supreme opportunity. What more affecting and delightful a virtue than that sweet spirit of forgiveness that juggles divinely with the proverbial coals of fire. Miss Jilian bear malice? No, the gods forbid! She would plead with her dear cousin, soothe his angry passions, stem the torrent of his wrath that threatened to descend upon the devoted dowager’s head. The Lady Letitia was a very old woman, and alas! my dear cousin, very worldly. She had her whims and her prejudices, and her temper had been rasped by the tooth of time. Naturally the Lady Letitia was ambitious for her dear nephew; who would not be ambitious for such a nephew as Richard Jeffray? The Lady Letitia had prejudices in favor of money. Could Richard blame her if she strove to save him from the “designs” of a poor baronet’s daughter, a country mouse who had no adornments save those simple virtues with which nature had endowed her unaffected soul?