“Do you mean that all this time you never knew that? Why, I have always known it. Teresa, how very funny! You have never thought about him as Mr Walter Wilbraham? It is such a beautiful name! But that you should not—Teresa, you are funny!”
“I shall know now.”
“Of course you will.” The girl gazed at her almost with compassion, as at one whom Wilbraham had called absent-minded. “It will be my name, you know. At least, I think so, as there is his mother. Perhaps,” she added pityingly, “perhaps you have forgotten that there is a mother?”
Teresa turned and kissed her impulsively.
“A mother—yes, what does it matter, what does anything matter? Only be happy, be happy, dear!”
“I am very happy,” said Sylvia simply. “And I like so much talking to you about it.”
“Always talk to me—not to any one else.”
“Not to granny?”
“No, not to granny—not even to granny. I’m your sister, I can understand,” cried Teresa, with a protective yearning in her heart, a defiant uprising against Mrs Brodrick’s prognostications.
“But I shall talk to Walter first,” said Sylvia; “of course, I shall tell him everything.”