, if I go to bed early. I dare say I am spiritless--not worth more
than I get. I gave him the lead altogether; he keeps it. In everything
else he is kind; I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe them. Kiss me
and say good night."

Aminta made it imperative by rising. Her aunt stood up, kissed, and
exclaimed, "I tell you you are a queenly creature, not to be treated as
any puny trollop of a handmaid. And although he is a great nobleman, he
is not to presume to behave any longer, my dear, as if your family had no
claim on his consideration. My husband, Alfred Pagnell, would have laid
that before him pretty quick. You are the child of the Farrells and the
Solers, both old families; on your father's side you are linked with the
oldest nobility in Europe. It flushes one to think of it! Your
grandmother, marrying Captain Algernon Farrell, was the legitimate
daughter of a Grandee of Spain; as I have told Lord Ormont often, and I
defy him to equal that for a romantic marriage in the annals of his
house, or boast of bluer blood. Again, the Solers--"

"We take the Solers for granted, aunty, good night."

"Commoners, if you like; but established since the Conquest. That is, we
trace the pedigree. And to be treated, even by a great nobleman, as if we
were stuff picked up out of the ditch! I declare, there are times when I
sit and think and boil. Is it chivalrous, is it generous--is it, I say,
decent--is it what Alfred would have called a fair fulfilment of a pact,
for your wedded husband--? You may close my mouth! But he pretends to be
chivalrous and generous, and he has won a queen any wealthy gentleman in
England--I know of one, if not two--would be proud to have beside him in
equal state; and what is he to her? He is an extinguisher. Or is it the
very meanest miserliness, that he may keep you all to himself? There we
are again! I say he is an unreadable sphinx."

Aminta had rung the bell for her maid. Mrs. Pagnell could be counted on
for drawing in her tongue when the domestics were near.

A languor past delivery in sighs was on the young woman's breast. She
could have heard without a regret that the heart was to cease beating.
Had it been downright misery she would have looked about her with less of
her exanimate glassiness. The unhappy have a form of life: until they are
worn out, they feel keenly. She felt nothing. The blow to her pride of
station and womanhood struck on numbed sensations. She could complain
that the bl