Now, every syllable of this colloquy had reached the ears of George Godolphin. It puzzled him not a little. Were there two Verralls? The Verrall of the Folly, with whom he had so recently exchanged words, had certainly not been in London for a fortnight past, or anywhere else but in that neighbourhood. And what did Charlotte mean, by saying he had gone to town that morning?
Charlotte came in, singing a scrap of a song. She started when she saw George, and then flew to him in a glow of delight, holding out her hands.
What could he do, but take them? What could he do, but draw Charlotte down beside him on the sofa, holding them still? “How pleased I am to see you!” exclaimed Charlotte. “I shall think the dear old times are coming round again.”
“Charlotte mia, do you know what I have been obliged to hear? That interesting colloquy you have been taking part in in the next room.”
Charlotte burst into a laugh. From the moment when she first caught a glimpse of George, seated there, she had felt sure that he must have heard it. “Did I do it well?” she cried, triumphantly.
“How could you invent such fibs?”
“Verrall came upstairs to me and Kate,” said Charlotte, laughing more merrily than before. “He said there was somebody going to call here, he thought with a begging petition, and he did not care to see him. Would I go and put the man off? I asked him how I should put him off, and he answered, ‘Any way. Say he had gone to London, if I liked.’”
Was Charlotte telling truth or falsehood? That there was more in all this than met the eye was evident. It was no business, however, of George Godolphin’s, neither did he make it his.
“And you have really walked here all the way by yourself!” she resumed. “I am so glad! You will get well now all one way.”
“I don’t know about getting well ‘all one way,’ Charlotte. The doctors have been ordering me away for the winter.”