“I know your ladyship did not give it to Mr. Temple—but to whom did you give it?”
“I remember now—not to any gentleman, after all—you are positively out. I gave it to Mrs. Falconer.”
“You are certain of that, Lady Frances Arlington?”
“I am certain, Mr. Alfred Percy.”
“And how can you prove it to me, Lady Frances?”
“The easiest way in the world—by asking Mrs. Falconer. Only I don’t go there now much, since Georgiana and I have quarrelled—but what can make you so curious about it?”
“That’s a secret.”—At the word secret, her attention was fixed.—“May I ask if your ladyship would know the seal again if you saw it?—Is this any thing like the impression?” (showing her the seal on the forged cover.)
“The very same that I gave Mrs. Falconer, I’ll swear to it—I’ll tell you how I know it particularly. There’s a little outer rim here, with points to it, which there is not to the other. I fastened my bread-seal into an old setting of my own, from which I had lost the stone. Mrs. Falconer took a fancy to it, among a number of others, so I let her have it. Now I have answered all your questions—answer mine—Whom am I to marry?”
“Your ladyship will marry whomsoever—your ladyship pleases.”
“That was an ambiguous answer,” she observed; “for that she pleased every body.” Her ladyship was going to run on with some further questions, but Alfred pretending that the oracle was not permitted to answer more explicitly, left her completely in the dark as to what his meaning had been in this whole conversation.