“Not a word of it,” said she, dryly.
“Not a word of it! but I thought you believed it.”
“Nothing of the kind. It was a lesson the young gentleman has long needed, and I was only waiting for a good opportunity to give it.”
“I don't understand you. What do you mean by a lesson?”
“I have very long suspected that it was a great piece of imprudence on our part to encourage the intimacy of this young man here, and to give him that position of familiarity which he obtained amongst us; but I trusted implicitly to the immeasurable distance that separated him from our girls, to secure us against danger. That clever man of the world, Mr. Maitland, however, showed me I was wrong. He was not a week here till he saw enough to induce him to give me a warning; and though at first he thought it was Bella's favor he aspired to, he afterwards perceived it was to Alice he directed his attentions.”
“I can't believe this possible. Tony would never dare such a piece of presumption.”
“You forget two things, Sir Arthur. This young fellow fancies that his good birth makes him the equal of any one; and, secondly, Alice, in her sense of independence, is exactly the girl to do a folly, and imagine it to be heroic; so Maitland himself said to me, and it was perfectly miraculous how well he read her whole nature. And indeed it was he who suggested to me to charge Tony Butler with being engaged to the minister's daughter, and told me—and as I saw, with truth—how thoroughly it would test his suspicions about him. I thought he was going to faint,—he really swayed back and forwards when I said that it was one of the girls from whom I had the story.”
“If I could only believe this, he should never cross the threshold again. Such insolence is, however, incredible.”
“That's a man's way of regarding it; and however you sneer at our credulity, it enables us to see scores of things that your obstinacy is blind to. I am sincerely glad he is going away.”
“So am I—now; and I trust, in my heart, we have seen the last of him.”