"I am told"—it was Frances who had told him in the passage just now—"that she refused Carey only the day before."
"She did."
"In order to make a runaway match with this parson fellow. The facts speak for themselves."
"Ah!" sighed Deb, turning to the tea-table, "I expect we don't know all the facts."
She meant that he did not know them. He only knew what Frances knew, and providentially they had been able to keep the episode of the dam out of the published story. That was the secret of Mary herself, her husband, her father, and this one sister; and they kept it close, even from Claud Dalzell. "I will tell him some day when we are married," Deb had promised herself; but as things fell out, she never did tell him. And it was on account of her brother-in-law's part in the suppressed event that she now forbore to call him behind his back what she had not hesitated to call him before his face—that is, failed to show that she fully shared her lover's indignation at the MESALLIANCE, and the scandalous way that it had been brought about.
"But, good heavens!"—Claud took his cup perfunctorily from her hand, and at once set it down—"are more facts necessary? She has made a clandestine marriage with a man whose bishop will turn him out of the church, I hope. They were right, I suppose, in concluding that no one here would consent to it; and what conceivable circumstances could excuse such an act?"
"Illness," said Deb. "Madness."
"Nonsense! There's too much method in it. It is obviously but the climax of a long intrigue—a course of duplicity that I could never have believed possible in a girl like Mary, although I have always thought HIM cad enough for anything."
"Have your tea," said Deb, a trifle off-hand; "it will be cold."
And she sat down with her own cup, and began to sip it with a leisurely air.