"Then you had better disabuse him of that notion, my dear, for you can't be engaged to two people at once; and I have given my consent to your marriage with Mr. Evandale."
"Do you think," said Enid, in a half whisper, "that I have been mistaken, and that Hubert will be—sorry?"
"No, dear, I don't!"
"Aunt Leo, is this report true about him and Miss West?"
"What do you know about Miss West, Enid?"
"Uncle Richard told me. She came to nurse Hubert when he was ill. Uncle Richard seemed to think that very wrong of her; but I don't. I think it was right, if she loved him. If Maurice were ill, I should like to go and nurse him, whether he cared for me or not."
"Child," said Miss Vane solemnly, "you are a simpleton! You don't know what you are talking about! I have seen Cynthia West and talked to her, and she is not a woman who, I should think, knows what true love is at all. She is hard and careless and worldly, and singularly ill-mannered. She is not the woman that Hubert would do well to marry."
"What am I to say to him?" asked Enid, with her eyes on the tablecloth, "if he says that he does not want to marry her—that he wants to marry me?"
"You must tell him the truth, my dear," said Miss Vane, rising briskly from the table, and shaking out a fold of her dress on which some crumbs had fallen—"namely, that you don't care a rap for him, but that you are in love with the Beechfield parson; and if Hubert is a gentleman, he will not press his claim. And to do Hubert justice, whatever may be his faults, I believe that he generally acts like a gentleman."
Miss Vane went away from the dining-room to dress for a drive and a round of calls. Before long, Enid, who had refused to accompany her, was left in the house alone; and then a vague desire began to take definite shape in her mind. She would see Hubert for herself. She would claim her own freedom, and tell him that he was free. He was well enough now to listen to her, if he was well enough to write. She would go to him while aunt Leo was out—that very afternoon.