Miss Martha was dismayed, and retreated amid showers of promises of secrecy, but with the elation of having confirmed the fact.
Marilda exclaimed, 'How horrid! Who can have gossiped? Now, John, do me a kindness! You tell Alda! I can't!'
'I am afraid I must ask the other half——'
'Can't you tell? No wonder. He is so much too good for me.'
'That's uncle Bill,' broke out the unsuspected Eddie, with his mouth full of her chocolate creams. 'He's worth ever so much more than you.'
'I have a better guess,' said his father, unable to help laughing, 'Travis? I heartily congratulate you. Never was there a nobler fellow!'
'It ought not to have been now,' said Marilda, 'but we could not help it. It had all been one long, long misunderstanding, and it came right of itself as soon as we began to talk to one another. Fernan says poor Edgar wished it, and dear Felix knew it, and sent us a blessing through Mr. Audley, but we meant no one to know for a month, or till I had gone home. It seems so unfeeling.'
'I do not think it will seem so here,' said John. 'You know Charlie's proposal rose almost out of Stella's grief for Theodore,' and as Marilda was trying to guess who had spread the report, he added, 'Never mind. Of course we know such things are in the very air.'
'It is Alda that concerns me,' said she, her face on fire, 'I would not have her hear it indirectly.'
So John, who had first known Alda and Fernan as the senior lovers, while he was still in suspense, undertook the communication and made it when Alda was pouring out his tea that evening. Her hand was steady, but her lips drew together as she said, 'Riches to riches.'