"Unnecessary?"
There was a ring of hope in Blake's voice; he liked to be told that any such confession was unnecessary, and would have welcomed such an assurance even from Grantley's hostile lips.
"Certainly; and equally unnecessary that I should tell Anna anything." He paused a moment, and then went on. "In a different case I might think I had a different duty—though, being what you might call an interested party, I should consider carefully before I allowed myself to act on that view. But as matters stand, you yourself have made any action on my part superfluous."
"I have?"
"Oh yes! You so far injured the fame of the woman for whom you hadn't afterwards the pluck to fight, that it's not necessary for me to tell Selford that you were in love with her a few months before you made love to his daughter, nor that you tried to run away with her, but that in the end you funked the job. I needn't tell him, because he knows—and his wife knows. You took care of that."
Young Blake said nothing, though he opened his lips as if to speak.
"And I needn't tell Anna either. That's unnecessary, for the same reason. She knows just as well as her father and mother know."
"She knows nothing, I tell you. She hasn't an idea——"
"Did you see her face when she saw that I wasn't Richards?"
"I tell you—— She was embarrassed, of course—— But——"