"Oh, but that is impossible, Arthur! We have bought almost everything new. I have reckoned it roughly up, and it will come to over a hundred and twenty pounds."
"If it would come to two hundred and forty it would be all the better," Arthur said. "You don't understand, aunt. This allowance money is burning in my pocket. I have had no means of spending it till now, and I am going to indulge myself. Please say no more about it, but just hand me the bills and I will see them paid. Now, you will really hurt me if you say any more."
Leon and his party came round to dinner, which Arthur had ordered to be sent in from a restaurant in Bond Street.
"How did you and Arthur get to know each other, Mercedes?" one of the girls asked.
"Well, we only knew each other from his knowing our brother, up to the time when he saved my life."
"Saved your life! He never told us anything about that."
"That is just like him!" Mercedes said impetuously. "It is too bad of him, everyone ought to know it;" and she gave them a vivid account of the manner in which he had rescued her. "After that," she said, "what could I do but marry him? I was engaged to someone else. I did not love him, you know; but it was a proper sort of engagement. The count was a man of good family and a friend of my brother's. He had asked Leon's consent, and Leon had given it, so there was nothing for me to say. But after Arthur had saved my life, of course it was different altogether, and I broke off the engagement. It was more than a year after that before I became engaged to Arthur. He declares that he never suspected I cared for him, though really I am afraid I showed it very much. Then Arthur had to fight a duel with the count and wounded him, and the count made two attempts on his life, and then you know the Church interfered and shut Arthur up in a dungeon, and he dug his way out in a wonderful way. Have you not heard all this before?"
"No, he never said a word about it in his letters," Mrs. Hallett said.
"Mercedes, you are chattering too much," Arthur said. "You thought a great deal about these things, but there was nothing worth telling."
"I am the best judge of that, sir," Mercedes said, tossing her head. "You go on talking to Leon and my sisters."