Now, and for the first time, Edith noticed Mr. Arrelsford, who had stepped back and away from her mother. She replied to his salutation with a cold and distant bow. The man’s face flushed; he turned away.
“But, mamma, the men outside,” persisted the girl.
“Wait, my dear,” said her mother, taking her gently by the arm; “I must tell you something. It will be a great shock to you, I am afraid.”
“What is it, mamma? Has father or——”
“No, no, not that,” said Mrs. Varney. “A man we have trusted as a friend has shown himself a conspirator, a spy, a traitor.”
“Who is it?” cried the girl, at the same time instinctively divining—how or why she could not tell, and that thought smote her afterward—to whom the reference was being made.
Mrs. Varney naturally hesitated to say the name. Arrelsford, carried away by his passion for the girl and his hatred for Thorne, was not so reticent. He stepped toward her.
“It is the gentleman, Miss Varney, whose attentions you have been pleased to accept in the place of mine,” he burst out bitterly.
His manner and his meaning were unmistakable. The girl stared at him with a white, haughty face, in spite of her trembling lips. Mechanically she thrust the envelope with the commission into her belt, and confronted the man who loved her and whom she did not love, who accused of this hateful thing the man whom, in the twinkling of an eye, she realised she did love. Then the daughter turned to her mother.
“Is it Mr Arrelsford who makes this accusation?” she asked.