"I do my best," Letitia replied, "and I really don't think he has anything to complain of."
The Duchess parted from her niece as they neared the house and proceeded to pay her first visit. She crossed the moat by the little handbridge, walked briskly across the intervening strip of park, and approached the little enclosure in which the cottage was situated. Richard Vont, seated in his usual corner of the garden, remained motionless at her approach. He neither rose nor offered any sort of greeting.
"Good morning, Vont," she said briskly, as she reached the paling.
He was looking at her fixedly from underneath his bushy grey eyebrows. He sat bolt upright in his chair, and he kept his hat upon his head.
"My good man," she remonstrated, "you might as well be civil. Why don't you stand up and take off your hat? You know who I am."
"Yes, I know who you are," he replied, without moving. "You are Caroline, Duchess of Winchester. I keep my hat upon my head because I owe you no respect and I feel none. As to asking you in, no one of your family will ever, of my will, step inside these palings."
"You are a very obstinate old man, Vont," she said severely.
"Well," she continued, leaning slightly against the paling and looking down at him, "I came down here to say a few words to you, and I shall say them, unless you run away. You are one of those simple, ignorant men, Vont, who love to nurse an imaginary injustice until the idea that you have been wronged becomes so fixed in your brain that you haven't room for anything else there. This behaviour of yours, you know, is perfectly ridiculous."
Vont made no sign even of having heard her. She continued.
"You haven't even a grievance. My brother took your daughter away from her home. Under some conditions, that would have been a very reprehensible thing. As things turned out, it has been the making of the young woman. She has received a wonderful education, has been taken abroad, and has been treated with respect and consideration by every one. My brother has devoted a considerable portion of his lifetime to ensuring her happiness. She is now a contented, clever, talented and respected woman. If she had remained here, she would probably have become the wife-drudge of a farmer or a local tradesman. You are listening, Richard Vont?"