"Entirely?" asked Lawrence.
"Of course I mean in regard to opportunities of finding out things and saying them. If Aunt Keswick had supposed I was only Annie Peyton, she would not have allowed Mr Croft to interfere with her plans for Junius and me. I expected Mr Null to be of service to me, but no one could have imagined that he would have brought about anything like this."
"Blessed be Null!" exclaimed Lawrence.
Annie asked him to please to be more careful, for how did he know that one of the servants might not be sweeping the front porch, and of course, they would look in at the windows.
"But, my dear child," said Lawrence, pushing back his chair to a prudent distance, "we must seriously consider this Null business. We shall have to inform your aunt of the present state of affairs, and before we do that, we must explain what sort of person Frederick Null, Esquire, really was—I am not willing to admit that he exists, even as a myth."
"Oh dear! oh dear!" exclaimed Annie. "We shall have a dreadful time! When Aunt Keswick knows that there never was any Mr Null, and then hears that you and I are engaged, it will throw her into the most dreadful state of mind that she has ever been in, in her life; and father has told me of some of the awful family earthquakes that Aunt Keswick has brought about, when things went wrong with her."
"We must be very cautious," said Lawrence, "and neither of us must say a word, or do anything that may arouse her suspicions, until we have settled upon the best possible method of making the facts known to her. The case is indeed a complicated one."
"And what makes it more so," said Annie, "is Aunt Keswick's belief that you are in love with Miss March, and that you want to get a chance to propose to her. She does think that, doesn't she?"
"Yes," said Lawrence, "I must admit that she does."
"And she must be made to understand that that is entirely at an end," continued Annie. "All this will be a very difficult task, Lawrence, and I don't see how it is to be done."