“I wonder if he did?” said his lordship thoughtfully.
Her full blue eyes stared at him. “What can you possibly mean? Freddy wish it?” A dreadful suspicion smote her. “Legerwood! It cannot be that she has entrapped Freddy into this engagement?”
“Oh, no, most unlikely, I imagine!” he responded coolly. “Quite an innocent!—refreshingly so, I thought.”
“Of course she is! Reared in such a way! But one is forced to consider whether she has not induced poor Freddy to offer for her only to escape from Arnside. And I am very, very sorry for her, and I am sure I know nothing against her, except that her mother was a Frenchwoman, which I cannot like, but it is not the match I hoped for! I hope I may not be an odious schemer—and if I were, I should be delighted to know that my dear son was to marry a fortune, which, I assure you, I am not, for of all things I detest anything mercenary, particularly when it is not in the least necessary that he should do so! I should be very glad to think that my uncle meant to leave legacies to the younger boys, but as for Freddy, he is abundantly provided for, and I did hope to see him married to someone of consequence, and not to a little countrified girl nobody ever heard of!”
“Do not despair!” recommended his lordship. “I will own myself astonished if anything comes of this engagement. My dear Emma, you are not such a goose-cap that you can imagine either of them to be in love with the other!”
Lady Legerwood was tieing the strings of her cap, but she let her hands fall, and turned in her chair to confront him. “But if she has not entrapped him, and they are not in love, in heaven’s name why have they become engaged?”
“That I don’t yet know,” he answered. “I am not sufficiently well-acquainted with Kitty even to hazard a guess. I suspect the existence of a plot—”
“Not of Freddy’s making!” interpolated Lady Legerwood, ruffling up in defence of her young.
“I am far too well-acquainted with Freddy to make it necessary for you to tell me that, my love. Certainly not of his making. For some reason, as yet hidden from us, Kitty wishes it to be thought that she is betrothed to Freddy. An interesting feature of the engagement—or so it seems to me—is that for reasons equally mysterious no immediate announcement is to be made.”
“No announcement?” she cried. “But why not?”