“Why? Is there anything extraordinary in the fact?”
“Oh no,” he said, recovering himself rather awkwardly from the momentary excitement. “It’s the sort of thing which is always being said of her. She’s food for gossips. And it never comes to anything.”
“It will have to come soon, I suppose,” remarked Claudia, with the scorn of twenty-one for thirty-one.
He took no notice of this, but as Mrs Leslie came into the room, turned sharply upon her.
“Gertrude, what’s this about Helen Arbuthnot?”
“Helen!” reflected Claudia.
“Colonel Tomlinson said she was going to marry Lord Dartmoor’s eldest son.”
“That stick! Rot!”
Mrs Leslie looked at him with warning in her eye.
“Really, Arthur, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be true. She is sure to marry somebody.”