“I don’t know them personally. I know Carew very slightly. Good family, I believe. Fine old place in Surrey.”
The Elizabethan manor house was true, then! Claire felt relieved, but not yet satisfied. Her suspicion was so deep-rooted that it was not easily dispelled. She sat silent for a moment, considering her next question.
“Is he the eldest son?”
“I believe he is. I’ve always understood so.”
The eldest son of a good family possessing a fine old place! Claire summoned before her the picture of the coarse florid-faced man who had tried to flirt with her in the presence of the woman to whom he was engaged; a man who stooped to borrow money from a girl who worked for her own living. What excuse could there be for such a man? She drew her brows together in puzzled fashion, and said slowly—
“Then surely, if he is the heir, he ought to be rich!”
“It doesn’t necessarily follow. I should say Carew was not at all flush. Landed property is an expensive luxury in these days. I’ve heard, too, that the father is a bit of a miser. He may not be generous in the matter of allowance!”
Claire sat staring ahead, buried in thought, and Captain Fanshawe stared at her in his turn, and wondered once more why this particular girl was different from every other girl, and why in her presence he felt a fullness of happiness and content. She was very pretty; but pretty girls were no novelty in his life; he knew them by the score. It was not her beauty which attracted him, but a mysterious affinity which made her seem nearer to him than he had hitherto believed it possible for any human creature to be. He had recognised this mysterious quality at their first meeting; he had felt it more strongly at Mrs Willoughby’s “At Home”; six months’ absence had not diminished his interest. Just now, when he had caught sight of her flushed upturned face, his heart had leapt with a violence which startled him out of his ordinary calm. Something had happened to him. When he had time he must think the thing out and discover its meaning. But how did she come to be so uncommonly interested in Carew? He met Claire’s eyes, and she asked falteringly—
“I wish you would tell me what you think of him personally! Do you think he is—nice?”
“Tell me first what you think yourself.”