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Updated: June 14, 2025
When he had stood there a few seconds, with his back turned, he heard her voice, somewhat shaken, though with the accent of recovered self-possession, saying, in a tone of summons, "Lord Hurdly " An inward revolt sprung up at being so addressed by her. The name had only sinister associations for him in any case, but to hear it from Bettina's lips filled him with a sort of rage.
To Lord Hurdly it gave an insight into Bettina's nature which he had not had before. He found her to be possessed of a power of caustic speech which, he was bound to acknowledge, had made him feel uncomfortable. He felt also that he had not succeeded in asserting his supremacy over her quite so conclusively as he could have wished.
"If we have wronged each other, we have done it ignorantly," she said. "He assured me that you were determined never to marry, and he counted on your past kindness and your attachment to him " She broke off, her voice shaken. "On the same ground I counted on him," said Lord Hurdly. "He was in no position to marry against my will, and in engaging to do so he defied me.
Indeed, as time went on and her knowledge of Lord Hurdly increased, the fear that he might have dealt insincerely with his cousin or with herself grew steadily. She saw proofs every day of the ruthlessness with which he sacrificed men, and even what should have been principles, to gain his ends.
When, however, the first consternation of the sudden blow was over, and he grew calm enough to be capable of anything like temperate thought, he tried to imagine how this strange state of things had come about. Obviously Bettina must have sought Lord Hurdly out, and it was almost certain that she had done this with a view to mediating between him and his offending heir.
I have bound myself, in my marriage to you, and I have no intention or desire to forget the duties which I owe you. But I tell you frankly, Lord Hurdly, that I am not accustomed to either surveillance or tyranny, and I shall not tamely submit to them. In the carrying out of this resolution, at least, you will find that I can be brave."
Yet in the heart of the man, who had loved completely and supremely, as Bettina never had, there was a feeling which made him say to himself, with a conviction which he knew to be immutable, that marriage was not for him. The present Lord Hurdly had said the same, and had changed his mind.
She had put her own construction on Lord Hurdly's evident surprise at sight of her, and it was one which gave her an increased self-possession and added to her sense of power. "Let us go into another room," said Lord Hurdly. "I cannot keep you here, and whatever you may have to say to me I am quite at leisure to attend to." He led the way from the room, and Bettina followed in silence.
The importance of her position was borne into her in a new and better way. By being Lady Hurdly she might hope, perhaps, to do some little service in bettering the lots of those who were at the other extreme of life's scale from her, whereas if she had remained in her former position she would have had as little value at one end as at the other.
Lord Hurdly, his cousin, was unmarried, it appeared, and was an inveterate enemy to matrimony. Horace Spotswood was his nearest of kin and legal heir. But Lord Hurdly was not over sixty two or three, and was likely to live a long time.
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