"And again I answer that years of suffering entitle one to the fleeting pleasure of seeing and speaking to Nancy's daughter."
"But she is Marten's daughter, too, and he may prove difficult."
"Let him. I have fought stronger adversaries, and won through in the end."
Secretary Howard joined them that night. After dinner he inquired if Power had ever had any dealings with Mowlem & Son, a firm of lawyers in New York.
"No," said Power. "The name is not familiar to me."
"Queer thing! A man who represented himself as their London agent called at my hotel yesterday and inquired if it was correct that you were in Devonshire. I said yes, and asked his business. He explained that Mowlem & Son wanted to know, and that was all he could, or would, tell me. I was inclined to believe him."
"Perhaps it is the usual hue and cry after a bloated capitalist."
"I rather fancy not. This fellow seemed to lay stress on your presence here. Besides, the company-promoting crowd have learned long since that you are unapproachable."
"At such a moment one might mention a peak in Darien," laughed Dacre, and the incident lapsed into the limbo of insignificant happenings.
Thenceforth Power met Nancy day after day. The approaching fête supplied the girl with a ready excuse for these regular visits to village and rectory. Power believed, though he did not seek enlightenment, that she had not spoken of him to her father. One day, when she was accompanied by the sleek, olive-skinned man he had seen at Bournemouth, she rather avoided him, and he ascertained from an awe-stricken rustic that the stranger was a prince, but of what dynasty his informant could not say.
At their next meeting he rallied the girl on her aloofness. She withered him with an indignant glance.
"Come!" she said imperiously, taking him from the schoolhouse in which a committee was assembled, and making for the tiny stone pier which sheltered a small estuary from southwesterly gales.
"I've got to tell you some day, and you may as well know now," she said, with a curious hardness of tone which she had probably acquired from Marten by the trick of association. "You loved my mother, and ought to have married her. If all was nice and providential in the best of all possible worlds, you would have been my father. Oh, you needn't flinch because I say that! If you _were_ my father, I'm sure you wouldn't force me to marry a man I detest. That person who came with me yesterday is the high and mighty Principe del Montecastello. I have to marry him, and I hate him!"