“Yes, let us chat, brother,” said she, with a kind of cheerfulness, decided as she was to draw from the conversation, in spite of all the dissimulation Lord de Winter could bring, the revelations of which she stood in need to regulate her future conduct.
“You have, then, decided to come to England again,” said Lord de Winter, “in spite of the resolutions you so often expressed in Paris never to set your feet on British ground?”
Milady replied to this question by another question. “To begin with, tell me,” said she, “how have you watched me so closely as to be aware beforehand not only of my arrival, but even of the day, the hour, and the port at which I should arrive?”
Lord de Winter adopted the same tactics as Milady, thinking that as his sister-in-law employed them they must be the best.
“But tell me, my dear sister,” replied he, “what makes you come to England?”
“I come to see you,” replied Milady, without knowing how much she aggravated by this reply the suspicions to which D’Artagnan’s letter had given birth in the mind of her brother-in-law, and only desiring to gain the good will of her auditor by a falsehood.
“Ah, to see me?” said de Winter, cunningly.
“To be sure, to see you. What is there astonishing in that?”
“And you had no other object in coming to England but to see me?”
“No.”