“As for my birth,” says Tita slowly, “I did not choose it; and you should be the last to throw it in my teeth.  If you disapproved of it before my marriage with your son, why did you not say so?”

“There were many reasons,” says Lady Rylton slowly, deliberately.  “For one, as you know, your money was a necessity to Maurice; and for another——­” She breaks off, and scans the girl’s face with an air of question.  “Dare I go on?” asks she.

“Why should you not dare?” says Tita.

A quick light has come into her eyes.

“Ah, that is it!  I have something to say to you that I think, perhaps, should be said, yet I fear the saying of it.”

“For you, or for me?” asks Tita.

She has her small brown hands clasped tightly together in her lap now.  There is something nervous in the tension of them.  Where, where is Margaret?  For all that, she looks back at her mother-in-law with a clear and fearless glance.

“For you,” says Lady Rylton—­“for you only!  But before I begin—­I am a very nervous person, you know, and scenes,” again pressing her handkerchief to her face, “upset me so—­tell me, do tell me, if you have a good temper!”

“I don’t know,” says Tita.  “Why?”

“Well, a reasonable temper!  I know Maurice would try anything—­less than that.”

“Has it to do with Maurice?  Yes?  I am very reasonable,” says Tita, laughing.  She shows all her pretty teeth.  “Now for the other reason for deigning to accept me as your son’s wife!”

She laughs again.  She seems to turn Lady Rylton into a sort of mild ridicule.

“I don’t think I should laugh about it if I were you," returns Lady Rylton calmly, and with the subdued air that tells her intimates when she is in one of her vilest moods.  “I feel very sorry for you, my poor child; and I would have warned you of this thing long ago, but I dreaded the anger of Maurice.”

“Why, what is it?” cries Tita vehemently.  “Has Maurice murdered somebody, or defrauded somebody, or run away with somebody?”

“Oh no!  He did not run away with her,” says lady Rylton slowly.

“You mean—­you mean——­”

The girl is now leaning forward, her small face rather white.

“I mean that he has been in love with his cousin for the past two years.”

“His cousin!” Tita’s thoughts run to Margaret.  “Margaret?”

“Nonsense!” says Lady Rylton; the idea strikes her as ludicrous.  The surprise, the strange awakening to the young bride, who, if not in love with her husband, has at all events expected loyalty from him, has affected her not at all; but this suggestion of Margaret as a possible lover of Maurice’s convulses her with amusement.  “Margaret! No!"

“Who, then?” asks Tita.

“Marian—­Marian Bethune.”

“Mrs. Bethune!”

“Did you never guess?  I fancied perhaps you had heard nothing, so I felt it my duty to let you into a little of the secret—­to warn you.  Marian might want to stay with you, for example—­and Maurice——­”