"Viscount Broadstairs—eldest son of the Earl of Ramsgate!" she read with wide-open eyes. "And he says he's directed to write, doesn't he? Well, you are funny in England! But I don't wonder I was afraid of Mr Disney."
"Oh, Mr Disney's secretary, I suppose. But, Mina——" Cecily was alive again now, but her awak
ening did not seem to be a pleasant one. She turned suddenly from her friend and, walking as far off as the little room would let her, flung herself into a chair.
"What's the matter?" asked Mina, checked in her excited gayety.
"What will Harry care about anything they can give him without Blent?"
Mina flushed. The conspiracy was put before her—not by one of the conspirators but by her who was the object of it. She remembered Lady Evenswood's question and Southend's. She had answered that it might not much matter whether Harry liked his cousin or not. He had not loved Janie Iver. Where was the difference?
"He won't want anything if he can't have Blent. Mina, did they say anything about me to Mr Disney?"
"No," cried Mina eagerly.
"But they will, they mean to?" Cecily was leaning forward eagerly now.
Mina had no denial ready. She seemed rather to hang on Cecily's words than to feel any need of speaking herself. She was trying to follow Cecily's thoughts and to trace the cause of the apprehension, the terror almost, that had come on the girl's face.