Archie laughed, quite unconstrainedly.
“As things are,” he said, “I suppose I may be quite frank. Rosy!—oh dear, no; we are the best of friends, as you are aware, but thoroughly and completely like brother and sister. And it is by no means improbable that she suspects the real state of the case, as Hebe is in my confidence.”
“Then who in all the world can it be?” said Lady Marth, completely nonplussed, “for somehow you seem to infer that it’s some one I know.”
“I don’t mind telling you,” said Archie. “You do know her—it is Blanche Derwent.”
For a moment or two Lady Marth did not speak. Then she said, half timidly:
“It must have been very sudden. You have seen very little of her? Oh yes, there was that Christmas week at Alderwood.”
“It all happened long before then,” said Archie.
“It is true, I had not seen much of her, but it doesn’t seem to me now that time is required in such a case. It was soon after they left Pinnerton, and took up that millinery business.”
“Before Sir Adam came home?”
“Of course,” said Archie drily.