"I should," says Geoffrey, pressing her hands. "You would always be to me the best and truest woman alive. But—but I shouldn't have liked it."
"Well, neither should I!" says Mrs. Geoffrey, with conviction. "I should perfectly have hated it. But I should never have forgiven myself if he had gone away with the will."
"It is quite a romance," says Jack Rodney: "I never heard anything like it before off the stage." He is speaking to the room generally. "I doubt if any one but you, Mona, would have got the will out of him. He hates the rest of us like poison."
"But—bless me!—how awfully he must be in love with you to resign the Towers for your sake!" says Nolly, suddenly giving words to the thought that has been tormenting him for some time.
As this is the idea that has haunted every one since the disclosure, and that they each and all have longed but feared to discuss, they now regard Nolly with admiration,—all save Lady Rodney, who, remembering her unpleasant insinuations of an hour ago, moves uneasily in her chair, and turns an uncomfortable crimson.
Mona is, however, by no means disconcerted; she lifts her calm eyes to Nolly's, and answers him without even a blush.
"Do you know it never occurred to me until this afternoon?" she says, simply; "but now I think—I may be mistaken, but I really do think he fancies himself in love with me. A very silly fancy, of course."
"He must adore you; and no wonder, too," says Mr. Darling, so emphatically that every one smiles, and Jack, clapping him on the back, says,—
"Well done, Nolly! Go it again, old chap!"
"Oh, Mona, what courage you showed! Just imagine staying in the library when you found yourself face to face with a person you never expected to see, and in the dead of night, with every one sound asleep! In your case I should either have fainted or rushed back to my bedroom again as fast as my feet could carry me; and I believe," says Dorothy, with conviction, "I should so far have forgotten myself as to scream every inch of the way."