Dreading ill news of Lucy, she hurried to the morning-room with him.
‘Fanny said I had better speak to you. This poor fellow is in a dreadful state.’
‘Algernon!’
‘No, indeed. Poor Hope! What has possessed the girl?’
‘Genevieve has not refused him?’
‘Did you not know it? I found him in his rooms as white as a sheet! I asked what was the matter, he begged me to let him go away for one Sunday, and find him a substitute. I saw how it was, and at the first word he broke down and told me.’
‘Was this to-day?’
‘Yes. What can the silly little puss be thinking of to put an excellent fellow like that to so much pain? Going about it in such an admirable way, too, writing to old Mamselle first, and getting a letter from her which he sends with his own, and promising to guarantee her fifty pounds a year out of his own pocket. ‘I should like to know what that little Jenny means by it. I gave her credit for more sense.’
‘Perhaps she thinks, under the circumstances of her coming here, within the year—’
‘Ah! very proper, very pretty of her; I never thought of that; I suppose I have your permission to tell Hope?’