The letter was addressed to “Thomas Thurnall, Esq., Aberalva.”

“Is this, then, your Sir Galahad?” asked he, after a pause, during which he had choked down his rising jealousy, while she looked first at herself in the glass, and then at him, and then at herself again, with a determined and triumphant air.

“And what if it be?”

“So he, then, has achieved the Quest of the Sangreal?”

Stangrave spoke bitterly, and with an emphasis upon the “he;” and—­

“What if he have?  Do you know him?” answered she, while her face lighted up with eager interest, which she did not care to conceal, perhaps chose, in her woman’s love of tormenting, to parade.

“I knew a man of that name once,” he replied, in a carefully careless tone, which did not deceive her; “an adventurer—­a doctor, if I recollect—­who had been in Texas and Mexico, and I know not where besides.  Agreeable enough he was; but as for your Quest of the Sangreal, whatever it may be, he seemed to have as little notion of anything beyond his own interest as any Greek I ever met.”

“Unjust!  Your words only show how little you can see!  That man, of all men I ever met, saw the Quest at once, and followed it, at the risk of his own life, as far at least as he was concerned with it:—­ay, even when he pretended to see nothing.  Oh, there is more generosity in that man’s affected selfishness, than in all the noisy good-nature which I have met with in the world.  Thurnall! oh, you know his nobleness as little as he knows it himself.”

“Then he, I am to suppose, is your phantom-husband, for as long, at least, as your present dream lasts?” asked he, with white, compressed lips.

“He might have been, I believe,” she answered carelessly, “if he had even taken the trouble to ask me.”

“Marie, this is too much!  Do you not know to whom you speak?  To one who deserves, if not common courtesy, at least common mercy.”

“Because he adores me, and so forth?  So has many a man done; or told me that he has done so.  Do you know that I might be a viscountess to-morrow, so Sabina informs me, if I but chose?”

“A viscountess?  Pray accept your effete English aristocrat, and, as far as I am concerned, accept my best wishes for your happiness.”

“My effete English aristocrat, did I show him that pedigree of mine which I have ere now threatened to show you, would perhaps be less horrified at it than you are.”

“Marie, I cannot bear this!  Tell me only what you mean.  What care I for pedigree?  I want you—­worship you—­and that is enough, Marie!”

“You admire me because I am beautiful.  What thanks do I owe you for finding out so patent a fact?  What do you do more to me than I do to myself?” and she glanced back once more at the mirror.

“Marie, you know that your words are false; I do more—­”

“You admire me,” interrupted she, “because I am clever.  What thanks to you for that, again?  What do you do more to me than you do to yourself?”