“You odd creature!” The mantle of the arch dissembler had now descended upon Milly.
Truth to tell, she and her mother had had a shrewd suspicion of Mary’s ignorance. They had learned from Wrexham that Jack Dinneford, owing to a series of deaths in a great family, had quite unexpectedly become the next-of-kin to the Duke of Bridport. Such a prospect was so little to the young man’s taste that as far as he could he always made a point of keeping the skeleton out of sight. Rightly or wrongly he had not said a word to Mary on the subject, and she with a pride a little overstrained, no doubt, had allowed herself no curiosity in regard to his worldly status. For whatever it might be it was obviously far removed from that of a girl of no family who had to get her own living as well as she could.
The news was stunning. As Mary walked about the room the look on her face was almost tragic.
“I think you ought to have told me,” she said at last.
“We thought you knew,” was Milly’s reply. This was a deliberate story. Mrs. Wren and herself in discussing the romantic news had concluded the exact opposite. But out of a true regard for Mary’s welfare, as they conceived it, they had decided to let her find out for herself. She was such an odd girl in certain ways that mother and daughter felt that the real truth about Jack Dinneford might easily prove his overthrow. Thus with a chaste conscience Milly now lied royally.
Mary, alas! was so resentful of the coup of fortune and her friends, that for a moment she was tempted to fix a quarrel on Milly. But Milly’s cunning was too much for her. She stuck to the simple statement that she thought she knew. There was no gainsaying it. And if blame there was in the matter it surely lay at the door of her own proud self.
Mary was still in the throes of an unwelcome discovery when Mrs. Wren came into the room. The appearance of that lady seemed to add fuel to the flame. Her felicitations, a little overwhelming in their exuberance, were in nowise damped by the girl’s dejection. To Mrs. Wren such an attitude of mind was not merely unreasonable, it was unchristian. To call in question the highest gifts of Providence betrayed a kink in a charming character.
“Fancy, my dear—a duchess. You’ll be next in rank to royalty.”
It was so hard for the victim to smother the tempest within that for the moment she dare not trust herself to speak.
“You’re very naughty,” said Mrs. Wren. “Why, you ought to offer up a prayer. You’ve had success too easily, the road has been too smooth. If you’d had a smaller talent and you’d had an awful struggle to get there, you’d know better than to crab your luck.”