Mr Cheviott listened attentively, without again interrupting his cousin. But Captain Beverley could see that it was with a lightened countenance he turned towards him again.
“Alys knows nothing of this?” he said. “You are perfectly certain that her eccentric behaviour to-day was not caused by her believing she in any way stood between you and Miss Western? Don’t you see, if it were so, this would injure you altogether; it might then seem as if she had done what she has out of pique, or self-sacrifice, or some feeling of that kind that, in a sense, you were to blame for?”
Mr Cheviott watched his cousin closely as he said this, but Arthur stood the scrutiny well. For a moment or two he stared as if he hardly understood; then a light suddenly breaking upon him, he flushed slightly, but there was no hesitation in his honest blue eyes as he looked up in his cousin’s face.
“I see what you mean,” he said, “but I didn’t at first. No, Laurence, Alys thinks of me as a brother; she did know and warmly approved of my admiration for Miss Western, but she never knew of its going further. I rather think she fancies it shared the fate of my other admirations, and that she thinks no better of me in consequence. What she did to-day had nothing to do with that. She has got into her dear little head that she comes between me and my fortune, and knowing that she never could possibly have cared for me, except as a brother, whether I had cared for her in another way or not, she has, for my sake, nobly taken the bull by the horns. And so far I feel all right. Had I proposed to her twenty times, she would never have accepted me.”
Mr Cheviott was silent. Whether or not he agreed with his cousin was not the question. That Arthur honestly believed what he said was enough.
“And what is to be done then?” said Arthur.
“What I said,” replied Mr Cheviott. “We must lay it all before Maudsley as soon as possible. And in the mean time, Arthur, do nothing more—let things remain as they are with Miss Western. In any case you cannot come into your property for two years.”
“But whatever happens, I am not going to let ‘things remain as they are,’ as you say, for two years,” said Arthur, aghast. “You can continue my present income for that time, anyway, now that my future is likely to be all right. At the worst, even if my engagement was publicly announced, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other as regards Alys and me. I should have shown I did not want to marry her, but she most certainly has shown she does not want to marry me.” He touched Alys’s paper as he spoke.
“Yes,” said Mr Cheviott, “that is true.”
“Perhaps,” said Arthur, laughingly, “if we appeal to the Court of Chancery, it will divide the estate between us. I shouldn’t mind. Lilias and I could live on what there would be well enough.”