‘Talbot has another piece of cardboard exactly similar to this,’ he continued, ‘and has only to place it over this rubbish for my meaning to become apparent.’
‘It is very ingenious,’ said Margaret. It was the highest praise she could afford. Such arts were distasteful to her. They seemed to suggest a natural turn for deception, and she secretly hoped that the invention lay at Talbot’s door.
‘Yes, I think the plan does me some credit,’ said William Henry complacently. ‘Well, I have only to lay the cardboard over this letter that so excited your indignation, to get at the writer’s meaning.’
Her eyes were turned towards him, but with no fixity of expression, she was bound to listen and to look, but her interest was gone.
‘“Why do you not send me a copy of the play?”’ he rapidly read. “One would think it was you only who had any stake in it;“ and so on, and so on. I suppose you have no wish to pry further into our little secret?’ he added, folding up the letter at the same time.
‘I did not wish to pry into it at all, Willie,’ she answered sorrowfully; ‘I again repeat I am sorry to have mistrusted you.’
‘Well, well, let us say no more about it. Let us forgive and forget.’
‘It is you who have to forgive, Willie, not I.’
‘I don’t say that,’ he answered gravely; ‘but if you think so, keep your forgiveness, Maggie, for next time. Be sure I shall have need of it.’
Here the voice of Mr. Erin was heard calling for Margaret.