This loyalty may have had its roots in pride--indeed, no other soil can be assigned to them--a pride that would allow no strangers to pry into the sore places of his being.

He frowned now to hear Hortensia's angry mention of her ladyship's name; and if his blue eyes moved uneasily under his beetling brows, it was because the situation irked him.

How should he stand as judge between Mistress Winthrop--towards whom, as we have seen, he had a kindness--and his wife, whom he hated, yet towards whom he would not be disloyal?
He wished the subject dropped, since, did he ask the obvious question--in what my Lady Ostermore could have been the cause of Hortensia's flight--he would provoke, he knew, a storm of censure from his wife.

Therefore he fell silent.
Hortensia, however, felt that she had said too much not to say more.
"Her ladyship has never failed to make me feel my position--my--my poverty," she pursued.

"There is no slight her ladyship has not put upon me, until not even your servants use me with the respect that is due to my father's daughter.