He felt her fingers tighten on his arm as she said,
“Forgive me, please say you will forgive me! I could not bear it that there should be any unpleasantness between us and it means so much to me that dearest Jane will be happy with you.”
The way she spoke made it difficult, the Duke thought, for him to be unpleasant.
At the same time, however, almost like a flash of lightning, it came into his mind that the Marquis of Lothian had said that the reason why Lady Jane had been sent to Italy was that she and her stepmother did not get on.
It was something he had forgotten when he was at Dalbeth House, but now he could remember the manner in which the Dowager Countess had put her arms round Jane’s shoulders and in what an affectionate way she had spoken to her.
He looked away from the Dowag
