Something choked her voice. Anthony looked at her and gave a little whistle of astonishment. “Then why on earth did he not?”
“They say that he wrote to you to tell you his desire, placing the matter entirely in your hands, and requesting that if you decided against it,”—she left out his father’s name, fearing to seem irreverent to the dead,—“you would take no notice of the letter; and they say—”
He interrupted her here sharply.
“They! Whom do you mean by they?”
“Mr Pitt,” said Winifred in a low voice, after a moment’s hesitation. “Mr Pitt says that you sent Mr Tregennas no answer.”
“So they believe that, do they?” he said in a jarred voice.
Winifred could not answer. Her heart was too full of pity and pain for her to speak. She held by the bar of the gate, and saw blankly lying before her the wintry fields, the tall, expressionless poplars. Anthony put another question in a moment, in the same coldly restrained tone.
“How do they account for my sharing the property with Marmaduke?”
“Anthony, do not force me to repeat such folly.”
“I must hear.”