After the death of Sir Archibald he himself sought my hand in marriage.

I shall always remember the form of his proposal; it concluded with these words: 'Had Archibald lived you would have been a countess.

You may still be a countess--but you must drop this suffragist show, you know.
It is all bally rot, Agatha, all bally rot.' I would not have married him without the condition, for I despised the man himself; but the condition made me furious and I drove him from my sight with words that turned him white and made him my enemy forever.

'You will not be my countess, then,' he said.

'Very well--but I can promise you that you will cease to be a suffragist.' I can still see the evil flash of his eye behind his monocle as he uttered these words and turned away." Lady Agatha shuddered at the recollection, and took a cup of tea.
"It was then," she resumed, "that the real persecution began.