“Ned! If you don’t tell me it will be quite shameful of you! You always know everything!”
“Yes, Nicky, but you think I know everything because I never tell you anything I am not quite certain of,” Carlyon replied, looking back at him with his faint smile. “What a sad blow it would be to my vanity if you found I could be just as easily mistaken as anyone else! You must let me keep my own counsel until I am certain. And now I must go back to Mrs. Cheviot.”
Chapter XVII
Mrs. Cheviot was found to be sufficiently recovered to be able to sit up. A rather more professional bandage encircled her head and she was distastefully sipping an evil-looking mixture. She managed to achieve a wan smile at sight of Carlyon, but she was still pale and evidently a good deal shaken. But some of her liveliness of mind seemed to have been restored, for Carlyon had not advanced two paces into the room when she observed in a dispassionate tone, “I have been recalling how you told me I might rest assured no disagreeable consequences would result from my marriage to your cousin. I wish you will tell me, my lord, what you deem a disagreeable consequence?”
He smiled. “Did I say that?”
“With some other untrue things. Indeed, you as good as told me you were rescuing me from all the horrors of Mrs. Macclesfield’s establishment, to set me up in peace and prosperity for the rest of my days. I was never so taken in!”
“I wonder why your mind runs so continually on Mrs. Macclesfield?” he said.
“Oh! One is apt, you know, to think wistfully upon what might have been!”
“My love,” interrupted Miss Beccles anxiously, “will you not come upstairs and lie down upon your bed as good Doctor Greenlaw advised you to do? I know you have the headache, and he has given you that draft to make you sleep, remember!”
“Yes, dear Becky, I will come, but not all the drafts in the world could bring sleep to me until I have had the opportunity to speak with his lordship. Do you go and desire Mary to put a hot brick in my bed and I will join you presently!”