Sir James, who is sitting in his sister's room, starts to his feet on reading this letter.
"Patience, I must go at once to Sartoris," he says, looking pale and distressed.
"To see that mad boy?"
"To see Dorian Branscombe."
"That is quite the same thing. You don't call him sane, do you? To marry that chit of a girl without a grain of common sense in her silly head, just because her eyes were blue and her hair yellow, forsooth. And then to go and get mixed up with that Annersley affair—"
"My dear Patience!"
"Well, why not? Why should I not talk? One must use one's tongue, if one isn't a dummy. And then there is that man Sawyer: he could get no one out of the whole country but a creature who——"
"Hush!" says Sir James, hastily and unwisely. "Better be silent on that subject." Involuntarily he lays his hand upon the letter just received.
"Ha!" says Miss Scrope, triumphantly, with astonishing sharpness. "So I was right, was I? So that pitiful being has been exposed to the light of day, has he? I always said how it would be; I knew it!—ever since last spring, when I sent to him for some cucumber-plants, and he sent me instead (with wilful intent to insult me) two vile gourds. I always knew how it would end."
"Well, and how has it ended?" says Sir James, with a weak effort to retrieve his position, putting on a small air of defiance.