She blushed deeply, painfully, for she had an appointment with Cecil that very afternoon. She remained silent, and Sir Piers interpreted her silence his own way.
He knew that they must inevitably meet at the ball given by the regiment, and for himself to be at that especial ball was, he deemed, a duty he owed to the old corps; so, as for the chances of Mary and Falconer meeting, he would ensure that it would only be as strangers in a crowded ball-room.
'Yes, Mary,' he resumed, 'I trust to your honour, that you will keep this fortune-hunter at a distance.'
'I do believe, uncle—nay, I am certain of it,' she said, in a pretty and coy, yet half-petulant manner, 'that Captain Falconer would marry me whether I had money or not. Oh how I wish I were without it!'
'Indeed!' said he with a cynical smile; 'for a commercial age, your ideas, my dear, are—to say the least of them—rather peculiar.'
'Now, you dear old pet, I wish you would say no more on this subject,' said Mary, glancing anxiously at a clock.'
'Why?'
'Because, grand-uncle, I don't want to marry anyone, and, any way, I will never commit the sin—for such it would be—of marrying one I do not, and never can love—there!'
'Meaning our Hew?'
'Yes, your Hew.'