‘Oh! I am so sorry. I wish—’
‘No, no, he only liked you the better for it. I assure you, Violet, he almost said so. Then that was what made him lay such stress on your being an innocent little victim.’
‘Would you be so kind as to explain it to me?’ said Violet, in such serious distress that he answered with less trifling than usual, ‘There is nothing to tell. I knew how it would be if I asked leave, so I took it. That’s all.’
‘And—and surely they didn’t know this at home?’
‘The less said about that the better, Violet,’ said Arthur. ‘You are all right, you know, and in great favour with John. He can do anything with my father, and I have written. We shall be at home before the end of another month, and set going with a decent income in London. A house—where shall it be? Let me see, he can’t give me less than £1000 a year, perhaps £1600. I vow I don’t see why it should not be £2000. John wants no more than he has got, and will never marry now, and there is only Theodora. I was always my aunt’s favourite, and if you mind what you are about we shall have our share of the old sugar-planter’s hoards, better than the Barbuda property—all niggers and losses. I wash my hands of it, though by rights it should come to the second son.’
Neither understanding nor heeding all this, Violet interrupted by gasping out, ‘Oh! I am so grieved.’
‘Grieved!—say that again. Grieved to be Mrs. Arthur Martindale?’
‘O no, no; but—’
‘Grieved to have found such a fool as to risk everything, and run counter to all his friends for the sake of that silly little ungrateful face?’
She was coaxed out of vexation for the present; but she awoke the next morning with a feeling of culpability and dread of all the Martindale family.