"I--_I?"_ says Lady Rylton. In all her long, tyrannical life she has met with so few people to show her defiance, that now this girl"s contemptuous reply daunts her. "You forget yourself," says she, with ill-suppressed fury.
"No, indeed," says t.i.ta, "it is because I remember myself that I spoke like that. And I think it will save time," says she quietly, "and perhaps a good deal of temper too--mine," smiling coldly, "is not good, you know--if you understand at once that I shall not allow you to say insolent things like that to me."
_ "You_ allow _me!"_ Tessie gets up from her chair and stares at her opponent, who remains seated, looking back at her. "I see you have made up your mind to ruin my son," says she, changing her tone to one of tearful indignation. "You accepted him, you married him, but you have never made even an effort to love him."
Here Tessie sinks back in her chair and covers her eyes with her handkerchief. This is her way of telling people she is crying; it saves the rouge and the powder, and leaves the eye-lashes as black as before.
"It is not always easy to love someone who is in love with someone else," says t.i.ta.
"Someone else! What do you mean?"
"There is one fault, at all events, that you cannot find with me,"
says t.i.ta; "I have not got a bad memory. As if it were only yesterday, I remember how you enlightened me about Maurice"s affection"--she would have said "love," but somehow she cannot--"for--for Mrs. Bethune."
"Pouf!" says the dowager. _"That!_ I don"t see how that can influence your conduct. You married my son, and you ought to do your duty by him. As for Marian, if you had been a good wife you should have taught him to forget all that long ago. It seems you have not."
She darts this barbed arrow with much joy, and watches for the pain it ought to have caused, but watches in vain. "The fact of your remembering it all this time only shows," says Tessie vindictively, angry at the failure of her dart, "what a malicious spirit you have.
You are not only malicious, but silly! People of the world _never_ remember unpleasant things."
"Well, I am not of them; I remember," says t.i.ta. She pauses. "People of the world seem to me to do strange things."
"On the contrary," with a sneer, "it is people who are not in society who do strange things."
"Meaning me?" flushing and frowning. t.i.ta"s temper is beginning to give way. "What have I done now?" asks she.
"That is what I have been trying to explain," says Lady Rylton, "but your temper is so frightful that I am afraid to go into anything.
Temper, my dear t.i.ta, should always be one"s slave; it should never be given liberty except in one"s room, with one"s own maid or one"s own husband."
"Or one"s own mother-in-law!"
"Well, yes! Quite so!" says Tessie with a fine shrug. "If you _will_ make me one apart, so be it. I hate scenes; but when one has a son--a precious, _only_ child--one must make sacrifices."
"I beg you will make none for _me."_
"I have made one already, however. I have permitted my son to marry you."
"Lady Rylton----"
"Be silent!" says Tessie, in a low but terrible voice. "How _dare_ you interrupt me, or speak to me at all, until I ask for a reply?
_You,_ whom I have brought from the very depths, to a decent position in society! You--whom I have raised!"
"Raised!"
"Yes--you! I tell you you owe me a debt you never can repay."
"I do indeed," says t.i.ta, in a low voice; her small firm hands are clasped in front of her--they are tightly clenched.
"You married him for ambition," goes on Tessie, with cold hatred in her voice and eye, "and----"
"And he?" The girl has risen now, and is clinging with both hands to the arms of her chair. She is very pale.
"Pshaw!" says the dowager, laughing cruelly. "He married you for your money. What else do you think he would marry _you_ for? Are you to learn that now?"
"No." t.i.ta throws up her head. _"That_ pleasure is denied you. He told me he was marrying me for my money, long before our marriage."
Lady Rylton laughs.
"What! He had the audacity?"
"The honesty!" Somehow this answer, coming straight from t.i.ta"s heart, goes to her soul, and in some queer, indescribable way soothes her--comforts her--gives her deep compensation for all the agony she has been enduring. Later on she wonders why the agony _was_ so great! Why had she cared or suffered? Maurice and she? What are they to each other? A mere name--no more! And yet--and yet!
"At all events," goes on Tessie, "when you made up your mind to marry my son, you----"
"It was your son who married me," says t.i.ta, with a touch of hauteur that sits very prettily on her. She feels suddenly stronger--more equal to the fight.
"Was it? I quite forget"--Tessie shrugs her shoulders--"these _little_ points," says she. "Well, I give you that! Oh! he was honest!" says she. "But, after all, not quite honest enough."
"I think he was honest," says t.i.ta.
Her heart is beginning to beat to suffocation. There is a horror in her mind--the horror of hearing again that he--he had loved Marian.
But how to stop it?
"You seem to admire honesty," says Lady Rylton, with a sneering laugh. "It is a pity you do not emulate _his!_ If Maurice is as true to you as you"--with a slight laugh--"imagine him, why, you should, in common generosity, be true to him. And this flirtation, with this Mr. Hescott----"
"Don"t go on!" says t.i.ta pa.s.sionately; "I cannot bear it. Whoever has told you that I ever---- Oh!" She covers her eyes suddenly with her pretty hands. "Oh! it is a lie!" cries she.
"No one has told me a lie," says Lady Rylton implacably.
The sight of the girl"s distress is very pleasant to her. She gloats over it.
"Then you have invented the whole thing," cries t.i.ta wildly, who is so angry, so agitated, that she forgets the commonest decencies of life. We all do occasionally!
"To be rude is not to be forcible," says Tessie, who is now a fury, "and I believe all that I have heard about you!" She makes a quick movement towards t.i.ta, her colour showing even through the washes that try to make her skin look young. "How _dare_ you insult me?"
cries she furiously. Tessie in a rage is almost the vulgarest thing that anyone could see. "I wish my son had never seen you--or your money. I wish now he had married the woman he loved, instead of the woman whom----"
"He hated," puts in t.i.ta very softly.
She smiles in a sort of last defiance, but every hope she has seems lying dead. In a second, as it were, she seems to _care_ for nothing. What _is_ there to care for? It is so odd. But it is true!
How blank the whole thing is!
"Yes. _Hated!"_ says Tessie in a cold fury. "I tell you he wanted to marry Marian, and her only. He would have given his soul for her, but she would not marry him! And then, when hope was at an end, he--destroyed self--he married _you!"_
"You are very plain! You leave nothing to be said." t.i.ta has compelled herself to this answer, but her voice is faint. Her poor little face, beautiful even in its distress, is as white as death.
"I am sorry----"
"For Maurice? So you _ought_ to be," says Lady Rylton, unmoved even by that pathetic face before her.
t.i.ta turns upon her. All at once the old spirit springs to life within the poor child"s breast.