“Where did your father go?”
“He went over to Port-Graham. He suddenly bethought him of a lease—I think it was a lease—he ought to have sent off by post, and he was so eager about it that he started without saying good-bye. And Mark,—what of him and Alice?”
“There's all the information I can give you;” and she handed her a card with one line in pencil: “Good-bye till evening, Bella. You, were asleep when I came in.—Alice.”
“How charmingly mysterious! And you have no idea where they 've gone?”
“Not the faintest; except, perhaps, back to the Abbey for some costumes that they wanted for that 'great tableau.'”
“I don't think so,” said she, bluntly. “I suspect—shall I tell you what I suspect? But it's just as likely you 'll be angry, for you Lyles will never hear anything said of one of you. Yes, you may smile, my dear, but it's well known, and I 'm not the first who has said it.”
“If that be true, Beck, it were best not to speak of people who are so excessively thin-skinned.”
“I don't know that. I don't see why you are to be indulged any more than your neighbors. I suppose every one must take his share of that sort of thing.”
Bella merely smiled, and Rebecca continued: “What I was going to say was this,—and, of course, you are at liberty to dissent from it if you like,—that, however clever a tactician your sister is, Sally and I saw her plan of campaign at once. Yes, dear, if you had been at dinner yesterday you 'd have heard a very silly project thrown out about my being sent over to fetch Tony Butler, under the escort of Mr. Norman Maitland. Not that it would have shocked me, or frightened me in the least,—I don't pretend that; but as Mr. Maitland had paid me certain attention at Lyle Abbey,—you look quite incredulous, my dear, but it is simply the fact; and so having, as I said, made these advances to me, there would have been considerable awkwardness in our going off together a drive of several hours without knowing—without any understanding—” She hesitated for the right word, and Bella added, “A quoi s'en tenir, in fact.”
“I don't know exactly what that means, Bella; but, in plain English, I wished to be sure of what he intended. My dear child, though that smile becomes you vastly, it also seems to imply that you are laughing at my extreme simplicity, or my extreme vanity, or both.”