“They shall come,” she quavered shrilly in her wildness. “They shall come to see me. They are my own father and mother, and I will have them.”
He caught her arm in such a grip that she must have thought he would break it, if she could have thought or felt anything.
“No, you will not have them,” he ground forth between his teeth. “You will do as I order you and learn to behave yourself as a decent married woman should. You will learn to obey your husband and respect his wishes and control your devilish American temper.”
“They have gone--gone!” wailed Rosalie. “You sent them away! My father, my mother, my sister!”
“Stop your indecent ravings!” ordered Sir Nigel, shaking her. “I will not submit to be disgraced before the servants.”
“Put your hand over her mouth, Nigel,” cried his mother. “The very scullery maids will hear.”
She was as infuriated as her son. And, indeed, to behold civilised human beings in the state of uncontrolled violence these three had reached was a sight to shudder at.
“I won't stop,” cried the girl. “Why did you take me away from everything--I was quite happy. Everybody was kind to me. I loved people, I had everything. No one ever--ever--ever ill-used anyone----”
Sir Nigel clutched her arm more brutally still and shook her with absolute violence. Her hair broke loose and fell about her awful little distorted, sobbing face.
“I did not take you to give you an opportunity to display your vulgar ostentation by throwing away hundred-pound cheques to villagers,” he said. “I didn't take you to give you the position of a lady and be made a fool of by you.”
“You have ruined him,” burst forth his mother. “You have put it out of his power to marry an Englishwoman who would have known it was her duty to give something in return for his name and protection.”
Her ladyship had begun to rave also, and as mother and son were of equal violence when they had ceased to control themselves, Rosalie began to find herself enlightened unsparingly. She and her people were vulgar sharpers. They had trapped a gentleman into a low American marriage and had not the decency to pay for what they had got. If she had been an Englishwoman, well born, and of decent breeding, all her fortune would have been properly transferred to her husband and he would have had the dispensing of it. Her husband would have been in the position to control her expenditure and see that she did not make a fool of herself. As it was she was the derision of all decent people, of all people who had been properly brought up and knew what was in good taste and of good morality.