You might call out the poor lad
and shoot him, or, worse still, have him put down to the bottom of
his class. But I did hear it. And then, when I find her staying
with her mother at your house, of course I believe it to be true."
"Now she is staying at your brother's house,--which is much the
same thing."
"But I am here."
"And my grandmother is at Bragton."
"That puts me in mind, Mr. Morton. I am so sorry that we did not
know it, so that we might have asked her."
"She never goes out anywhere, Lady Penwether."
"And there is nothing then in the report that I heard?"
Morton paused a moment before he answered, and during that moment
collected his diplomatic resources. He was not a weak man, who
could be made to tell anything by the wiles of a pretty woman. "I
think," he said, "that when people have anything of that kind which
they wish to be known, they declare it."
"I beg your pardon. I did not mean to unravel a secret."
"There are secrets, Lady Penwether, which people do like to
unravel, but which the owners of them sometimes won't abandon."
Then there was nothing more said on the subject. Lady Penwether did
not smile again, and left him to go about the room on her business
as hostess, as soon as the dance was over. But she was sure that
they were engaged.
In the meantime, the conversation between Lord Rufford and Arabella
was very different in its tone, though on the same subject.
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