"And I to see you," said Stella, "for I have never yet had a chance of thanking you"; and she spoke with so much frankness that even Pettifer was shaken in his suspicions. She turned upon Mr. Hazlewood with a mimicry of indignation. "Do you know, Mr. Hazlewood, that you have done a very cruel thing?"
Mr. Hazlewood was utterly discomfited by the failure of his plot, and when Stella attacked him so directly he had not a doubt but that she had divined his treachery.
"I?" he gasped. "Cruel? How?"
"In not telling me beforehand that I was to meet so good a friend of mine." Her face relaxed to a smile as she added: "I would have put on my best frock in his honour."
Undoubtedly Stella carried off the honour of that encounter. She had at once driven the battle with spirit onto Hazlewood's own ground and left him worsted and confused. But the end was not yet. Mr. Hazlewood waited for his son Richard, and when Richard appeared he exclaimed:
"Ah, here's my son. Let me present him to you, Mr. Thresk. And there's the family."
He leaned back, with a smile in his eyes, watching Henry Thresk. Robert
Pettifer watched too.
"The family?" Thresk asked. "Is Mrs. Ballantyne a relation then?"
"She is going to be," said Dick.
"Yes," Mr. Hazlewood explained, still beaming and still watchful.
"Richard and Stella are going to be married."