“Of course you haven’t. I alone knew. She has run away to England.”
“Run away! But she’ll be caught!”
“She may be. But that is not all. She has run away to get married. She dared not tell me. She wrote me. She put the letter in the manuscript of the last chapter but one of her book, which I am revising for her. She will almost certainly be caught if she tries to get married in her own name. Therefore she will get married in a false name. All this, however, is not what I wanted to tell you about.”
“Then you shouldn’t have begun to talk about it,” said Audrey suddenly. “Did you expect me to let you leave it in the middle! Jane getting married! I do think she might have told me.... What next, I wonder! I suppose you’ve—er—lost her now?”
“Not entirely, I believe,” said Rosamund. “Certainly not entirely. But of course I could never trust her again. This is the worst blow I have ever had. She says—but why go into that? Well, she does say she will work as hard as ever, nearly; and that her future husband strongly supports us—and so on.” Rosamund smiled with complete detachment.
“And who’s he?” Audrey demanded.
“His name is Aguilar,” said Rosamund. “So she says.”
“Aguilar?”
“Yes. I gather—I say I gather—that he belongs to the industrial class. But of course that is precisely the class that Jane springs from. Odd! Is it not? Heredity, I presume.” She raised her shoulders.
Audrey said nothing. She was too shocked to speak—not pained or outraged, but simply shaken. What in the name of Juno could Jane see in Aguilar? Jane, to whom every man was the hereditary enemy! Aguilar, who had no use for either man or woman! Aguilar, a man without a Christian name, one of those men in connection with whom a Christian name is impossibly ridiculous. How should she, Audrey, address Aguilar in future? Would he have to be asked to tea? These vital questions naturally transcended all others in Audrey’s mind.... Still (she veered round), it was perhaps after all just the union that might have been expected.