“Not the not getting your patrimony. You don’t mean that?” interrupted Laurence. “Heaven only knows what the relief will be to me if, as I am beginning to hope, it is decidedly the right way.”
“No, I didn’t mean that exactly,” said Arthur. “I know you and Alys are less selfish and grasping than any two people I have ever come across—cela va sans dire—I meant the bother and worry and all the rest of it. I wish somehow something might go to Alys. I can’t help wishing that, you see, knowing it all and feeling just as if she were my own sister.”
“Don’t wish it,” said Laurence, shortly. “Alys will have enough. Married or single she need never be dependent on any one.”
“Ah, yes!” returned Arthur; “but still—She wouldn’t be the worse of a home of her own. Downham now—it’s a nice little place, and what on earth should I do with two—three, there’s the Edge,” he added, with a merry, boyish laugh—“if Downham, now, could be settled on Alys, for, you see, Laurence,” he added, seriously, and as hesitating to allude to anything so completely out of the range of probabilities, “after all, it’s just possible you may marry.”
“I suppose so,” said Laurence, with a touch of bitterness in his tone which Arthur, had he perceived, would have been at a loss to explain, “I suppose so, but so highly unlikely, it is no use taking it into consideration one way or another. Confess now, Arthur, you hardly could, could you, imagine such a thing as any girl’s caring for me?”
Arthur looked up at his cousin with some surprise. Was Laurence joking? He could not tell.
“I don’t know why one shouldn’t,” he said, meditatively. “A girl, I mean—I don’t see why you need fancy yourself so unattractive. You’re good-looking enough, and—come now, Laurence, that’s not fair; you’re leading me out to laugh at me,” for so only could he interpret the slight smile that flickered over his cousin’s face.
“I was in earnest, I assure you,” said Mr Cheviott. “However, never mind. We’ll postpone the discussion of my charms to a more convenient season. Here we are at home.”
“Shall you have your talk with Alys to-night?” said Arthur.
“Probably—unless, that is to say, you would rather I should wait till—till—how shall I put it?—till you get a reply to your letter to Hathercourt.”