"No, you must not. Sit down in your low chair and forget all about them. No good hostess fusses after her guests. People like to be left to themselves."
I sat down meekly.
"I never can understand," said Antony, presently, "why your grandmother did not let me know when first you came to the cottage. She was fully aware of the relationship between us, even if I was not."
"Grandmamma was a very proud woman. We were so very poor. And then, there was grandpapa's bêtise, which, I fancy, had quite separated them from his family."
"What made her come to Ledstone at all, I wonder?"
I felt my cheeks getting pink, and bent down to look into the fire.
"She wanted to live in England, so that I might become English by growing up there, and—and it was cheap. We had been in London before that, and back in Paris, and down at Brighton, and a lot of dull places. I remember she saw the advertisement in the paper one morning and took the cottage immediately."
"You had heard that we were relations?" he asked.
"Yes, vaguely. But I did not know how many of you there were, only that the present holder of the title was a Sir Antony."
"It was a strange coincidence neither of us should have caught the other's name at the ball that night."