‘The present Lady Ormont will wear them the day she is presented.’

‘She won’t wear them at Court.’

‘She will.’

’Don’t expect the Lady Ormont of tradesmen and footmen to pass the Lord Chamberlain.’

’That matter will be arranged for next season.  Now I ‘ve done.’

‘So have I; and you have my answer, Rowsley.’  They quitted their chairs.

‘You decline to call on my wife?’ said the earl.

Lady Charlotte replied:  ’Understand me, now.  If the woman has won you round to legitimize the connection, first, I’ve a proper claim to see her marriage lines.  I must have a certificate of her birth.  I must have a testified account of her life before you met her and got the worst of it.  Then, as the case may be, I ’ll call on her.

‘You will behave yourself when you call.’

‘But she won’t have our family jewels.’

‘That affair has been settled by me.’

’I should be expecting to hear of them as decorating the person of one of that man Morsfield’s mistresses.’

The earl’s brow thickened.  ’Charlotte, I smacked your cheek when you were a girl.’

’I know you did.  You might again, and I wouldn’t cry out.  She travels with that Morsfield; you ’ve seen it.  He goes boasting of her.  Gypsy or not, she ‘s got queer ways.’

’I advise you, you had better learn at once to speak of her respectfully.’

’I shall have enough to go through, if what you say’s true, with questions of the woman’s antecedents and her people, and the date of the day of this marriage.  When was the day you did it?  I shall have to give an answer.  You know cousins of ours, and the way they ’ll be pressing, and comparing ages and bawling rumours.  None of them imagined my brother such a fool as to be wheedled into marrying her.  You say it’s done, Rowsley.  Was it done yesterday or the day before?’

Lord Ormont found unexpectedly that she struck on a weak point.  Married from the first?  Why not tell me of it?  He could hear her voice as if she had spoken the words.  And how communicate the pell-mell of reasons?

‘You’re running vixen.  The demand I make is for the jewels,’ he said.

‘You won’t have them, Rowsley—­not for her.’

‘You think of compelling me to use force?’

‘Try it.’

‘You swear the jewels are with your bankers?’

‘I left them in charge of my bankers, and they’ve not been moved by me.’

‘Well, it must be force.’

‘Nothing short of it when the honour of our family’s concerned.’

It was rather worse than the anticipated struggle with this Charlotte, though he had kept his temper.  The error was in supposing that an hour’s sharp conflict would settle it, as he saw.  The jewels required a siege.

‘When does Eglett return?’ he asked.

’Back to lunch.  You stay and lunch here, Rowsley we don’t often have you.’