cause of
Hortensia's flight--he would provoke, he knew, a storm of censure from
his wife. Therefore he fell silent.

Hortensia, however, felt that she had said too much not to say more.

"Her ladyship has never failed to make me feel my position--my--my
poverty," she pursued. "There is no slight her ladyship has not put upon
me, until not even your servants use me with the respect that is due
to my father's daughter. And my father," she added, with a reproachful
glance, "was your friend, my lord."

He shifted uncomfortably on his feet, deploring now the question with
which he had fired the train of feminine complaint. "Pish, pish!" he
deprecated, "'tis fancy, child--pure fancy!"

"So her Ladyship would say, did you tax her with it. Yet your lordship
knows I am not fanciful in other things. Should I, then, be fanciful in
this?"

"But what has her ladyship ever done, child?" he demanded, thinking
thus to baffle her--since he was acquainted with the subtlety of her
ladyship's methods.

"A thousand things," replied Hortensia hotly, "and yet not one upon
which I may fasten. 'Tis thus she works: by words, half-words, looks,
sneers, shrugs, and sometimes foul abuse entirely disproportionate to
the little cause I may unwittingly have given."

"Her ladyship is a little hot," the earl admitted, "but a good heart;
'tis an excellent heart, Hortensia."

"For hating-ay, my lord."

"Nay, plague on't! That's womanish in you. 'Pon honor it is! Womanish!"

"What else would you have a woman? Mannish and raffish, like my Lady
Ostermore?"

"I'll not listen to you," he said. "Ye're not just, Hortensia. Ye're
heated; heated! I'll not listen to you. Besides, when all is said, what
reasons be these for the folly ye've committed?"

"Reasons?" she echoed scornfully. "Reasons and to spare! Her ladyship
has made my life so hard, has so shamed and crushed me, put such
indignities upon me, that existence grew unbearable under your roof. It
could not continue, my lord," she pursued, rising under the sway of her
indignation. "It could not continue. I am not of the stuff that goes
to making martyrs. I am weak, and--and--as your lordship has
said--womanish."

"Indeed, you talk a deal," said his lordship peevishly. But she did not
heed the sarcasm.

"Lord Rotherby," she continued, "offered me the means to escape. He
urged me to elope with him. His reason was that you would never consent
to our marriage; but that if we took the matter in