“I am sure he does not say that.”
“Ah! but I’m sure that he does. The former is true enough, and I never complain of the truth. But as to the latter, I am by no means so certain that it is true—not in the sense that he means it.”
“Dear, dearest woman, don’t go on in that way now. Do speak out to me, and speak without jesting.”
“Whose was the other judgment to whom he trusts so implicitly? Tell me that.”
“Mine, mine, of course. No one else can have spoken to him about it. Of course I talked to him.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him—”
“Well, out with it. Let me have the real facts. Mind, I tell you fairly that you had no right to tell him anything. What passed between us, passed in confidence. But let us hear what you did say.”
“I told him that you would have him if he offered.” And Mrs. Gresham, as she spoke, looked into her friend’s face doubtingly, not knowing whether in very truth Miss Dunstable were pleased with her or displeased. If she were displeased, then how had her uncle been deceived!
“You told him that as a fact?”