“Yes, I enclosed it, with an inscription dictated by Sir Within himself.”
“And she sends it back to him?” said she, pondering oyer each word as though it were charged with a deep significance.
“It would seem so.”
“I think you guess why. I am certain, if I have not taken a very wrong measure of Mr. Grenfell’s acuteness, that he reads this riddle pretty much as I do myself.”
“It is by no means improbable,” said Grenfell, who quickly saw the line her suspicions had taken. “I think it very likely the same interpretation has occurred to each of us.”
“Give me yours,” said she, eagerly.
“My reading is this,” replied he: “she has returned his present on the ground that, not being Mrs. Ladarelle, she has no claim to it. The restitution serving to show at the same moment a punctilious sense of honour, and, what she is fully as eager to establish, the fact that, being still unmarried, there is nothing to prevent Sir Within himself from a renewal of his former pretensions.”
“How well you know her! How thoroughly you appreciate her wily, subtle nature!” cried she, in warm admiration.
“Not that the game will succeed,” added he; “the poor old man is now beyond such captations as once enthralled him.”
“How so? What do you mean?” asked she, sharply.