“It expresses what I mean,” said Alys, pushing back the hair off her throbbing temples. “And since I have been ill I have had so much time for thinking and wondering and puzzling out things—and I think I have become quicker, cleverer, in a way than I used to be. I seem as if I could almost guess at things by magic, sometimes. Now, aunt, what I want to know is this—is Arthur’s future in any way dependent on me, or anything I may or may not do?”
“Had you not better ask Laurence?” said Miss Winstanley, tremulously, driven at last hopelessly into a corner.
“No, it would be no use. There is something that he is, in some way, debarred from telling me, I am sure, otherwise he would have told me, for he has no love of mystery or secrecy. And yet I feel equally sure that it is something that can only be put straight by my knowing it.”
Miss Winstanley sat silent, a picture of bewildered distress.
“Aunt,” said Alys again, after a short pause, her cheeks and brow flushing to the roots of her hair, “what I am going to ask you I don’t like to put in words—it seems to me such an altogether repulsive, unnatural idea, but, as you won’t speak without, I must ask you. Has all this trouble anything to do with my marrying some one, any one in particular? You told me once that Uncle Beverley, Arthur’s father, was extraordinarily fond of me when I was a baby, and that he would have done anything to show his gratitude to my mother for what she had done for him. Now, aunt, has this anything to do with the peculiar terms of his will, which I have very often heard alluded to?”
“I have never seen the will; believe me, Alys, I do not know its exact terms,” Miss Winstanley pleaded.
“Well, I dare say you don’t, aunt. But you know enough to throw a little daylight on my part of it. Aunt, is it, can it be that Arthur’s inheriting his father’s property—his own property—depends on his marrying me?”
Her voice quivered and fell—a whole army of contending feelings were at war within her as she waited breathlessly for Miss Winstanley’s reply.
“No, not exactly,” she said, trying, as usual, to shelter herself behind vague and indefinite answers, “if you did not want to many him, he would not be punished for that. Now, Alys, this is all I can say. I am going away upstairs to my own room, to avoid any more talk of this kind.”
Miss Winstanley rose from her seat, nervously tugging at her shawl which, as usual, had dropped far below her waist as she got up.