"No," he said, "I do not want you to tell anyone this time. I want it to be really kept quiet. You will see why directly."
"And the happy young lady is Miss Violet Graham, I suppose?" said Lottie, after a moment's pause. "What a funny thing it is that Fortune showers all her gifts on some persons and bestows only slaps on the face on others. Now, there's Miss Graham, the richest woman in England, and Fortune goes and gives her the nicest and handsomest young man for a husband, while I, poor Lottie Belvoir, have to struggle and struggle, and work like a nigger, and all I get is some small part in a frivolity burlesque. It is funny, isn't it?"
"Very funny," assented Austin Ambrose; "but you are a little wrong in your guess. It is not Miss Graham."
"Not Miss Graham! Who then?"
Austin Ambrose did not hesitate a moment. He had well calculated his plans, and he knew that if he meant to tell anything to the sharp Miss Lottie he must tell all. Half confidences could be of no use.
"Look here, Lottie," he said, "I am going to confide in you because I know that you are unlike most women, inasmuch as you can, if you like, hold your tongue."
"Thanks," she said, watching him closely; "that's a compliment for me. I really think you do mean business, you are so very polite."
"I told you I wanted you to help me, and you can't help me unless you know all I know. Blair is not going to marry Miss Graham, but a young woman whom I have not seen, whom I never heard of—nor any one else. She is, I believe, a kind of servant——"
Lottie sat up, open-eyed.
"What!" she exclaimed and the color came into her face again. If Lord Blair had been going to marry Miss Graham, she would have regarded it as a matter of course, but that he should be going to throw himself away upon a "kind of servant" was more than she could bear with equanimity.