She turned her large child-like eyes on him with mute reproach.
"You should have told me before," were her first articulate words. "No wonder Cecil hated me when you were pretending to care for me behind her back."
Bertie murmured,—"There was no pretence in the matter."
"Then why do you marry Cecil?" asked Bluebell, with the most uncompromising directness. "Is it because she is rich?"
"Confound it," thought Du Meresq; "I trust she won't suggest that to Cecil."
"Can't I love you both?" cried he, somewhat irritated; and just then Miss Prosody and her brood appeared in sight.
"I return you my share," exclaimed Bluebell, breaking abruptly from him, and, running down the path, joined the governess and children.
Du Meresq had rather a bad quarter of an hour over the pipe which this sentimental episode had extinguished; but he could not regret, in the face of his new engagement, the finale of a past and now inopportune love-affair.
Bluebell did not come down to dinner that day nor see Du Meresq again; but afterwards, Mrs. Rolleston, who was in nobody's confidence, and had the uneasy conviction that something was going desperately wrong, came into her room.
Bluebell's state of repression could endure no longer. She began by entreating Mrs. Rolleston to accept Mrs. Leighton's situation, and let her go to England at once; and after that it did not take much pressing to induce her to make full confession of all that had passed.