“Eh, ma foi!” said Mrs Rose.
“With whom shall she wed?” asked Mrs Tremayne.
“Sir Thomas, is that true?” was the last remark—in hoarse accents, from Arthur.
“It is true, my lad. Have I heard truly, that you would not have it so?”
Mrs Tremayne looked at her son in a mixture of astonishment and dismay. It had never occurred to her guileless, unsuspicious mind that the object of his frequent visits to Enville Court could be any one but Clare.
“Sir, I cry you mercy,” said Arthur with some dignity. “I do readily acknowledge that I ought not to have left you in the dark. But to speak truth, it was she, not I, that would not you should be told.”
“That would not have me told what, Arthur?”
“That I loved her,” said Arthur, his voice slightly tremulous. “And—she said she loved me.”
“She told me that she had given thee no encouragement to speak to me.”
“To speak with you—truth. Whene’er I did approach that matter, she alway deterred me from the same. But if she hath told you, Sir, that she gave me no encouragement to love and serve her, nor no hope of wedding with her in due time,—why, then, she hath played you false as well as me.”