Alys took no notice of her last sentence.
“If I don’t want to marry him, he will be none the worse,” she repeated, slowly, “but if he doesn’t want to marry me—what then? That would be a different story! Thank you, aunt; on the whole, I think you have told me enough, so you may stay down-stairs without fear. I am not going to ask any more questions.”
Her tone was cool and composed enough, yet, on the whole, Miss Winstanley would rather have had her more visibly angry. There was a gleam in her eyes and a scorching spot on each cheek which her aunt had not for long seen there. “Alys was very hot-tempered as a child,” she was wont to say of her, “but of late years she had calmed down wonderfully.”
“No, Alys, I don’t want to stay down-stairs, thank you,” she replied, reprovingly, tugging harder than ever at the front of the recalcitrant shawl, her efforts in some mysterious way only resulting in a more tantalising descent behind.
Alys made no reply.
“To think,” she was muttering to herself, “to think how all this time I have been kept in the dark! How like a fool I have behaved! Laurence might have warned me somehow—however he was bound down not to tell me. He had better have tried to upset the will on the ground of Uncle Beverley’s being mad, which he certainly must have been!”
Two minutes after Miss Winstanley left the room Captain Beverley entered it.
“Alys,” he said, as he came in, “Laurence said you wanted me, so here I am. Why, what’s the matter, child?” he added, with a quick change of tone as he caught sight of her face. She was not crying, but her cheeks were burning and her eyes gleaming, and as she looked up to answer her cousin, he saw that she was biting her lips in a quick nervous way to keep back the tears—a gesture peculiar to her from childhood.
“Everything is the matter,” she said, bitterly. “I feel as if I should never trust any one again. I have something to say to you, Arthur, something very particular, and I want to say it very distinctly, so please to listen.”
“I’m all attention,” said Arthur, lightly still, though in reality not a little apprehensive as to what was coming. What could it be? Could Alys have found out about the understanding that now existed between himself and Lilias—she had been so intimate with Mary Western at the Edge? But a moment’s reflection dismissed the idea. Lilias was too true to have told any one, even her sister, without his sanction. Besides, even had the fact come to Alys’s knowledge, she would have been pleased and sympathising, not discomposed and indignant, as she evidently was.