"
"For me, I suppose. You need not do so in future. I have got out of the
habit of taking breakfast; and in any case I don't want this unnecessary
display. Captain Kirton gets up later, I presume."
"He's hardly ever up before eleven," said Hedges. "But he makes a good
breakfast, my lord."
"That's right. Tempt him with any delicacy you can devise. He wants
strength."
The dowager was fuming. "Don't you think I'm capable of regulating these
things, Hartledon, I'd beg leave to ask?"
"No doubt. I beg you will make yourself at home whilst you stay with us.
Some tea, Hedges."
She could have thrown the coffee-pot at him. There was incipient defiance
in his every movement; latent war in his tones. He was no longer the
puppet he had been; that day had gone by for ever.
Perhaps Val could not himself have explained the feeling that was this
morning at work within him. It was the first time he and the dowager had
met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently
the ill-omened past: her unjustifiable scheming--his own miserable
weakness. If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak
yielding, he felt it now--felt it in all its bitterness; and something
very like rage against the dowager was bubbling up in his spirit, which
he had some trouble to suppress.
He did suppress it, however, though it rendered him less courteous than
usual; and the meal proceeded partly in silence; an interchanged word,
civil on the surface, passing now and then.
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