“Gammon,” the Marchioness snapped at him. “‘Our pride and our honour’, you mean Mandrake. You and your father are the same. You think not of me nor of human beings, you think only of this house. The Vulcans of Mandrake, that is all that life means to you. The history of the family, the history of the house. Lud, I am sick of it! I have listened to it all my life. Have I no existence of my own? Am I not a woman with feelings? Have I no interests, have I not a life to live that is apart from the everlasting tentacles of family and place? Your father married me and that, I truly believe, was because he thought that I was beautiful enough to grace a house that he loved to the exclusion of all else. There was no room for a woman in his life. He wanted not living flesh and blood, he wanted a Mis
