“But what has put marrying so much into your head to-day? This morning you were distressing yourself about Arthur’s prospects, and now you are worrying yourself about mine?”
“Not worrying myself. It is only natural I should think about your future sometimes. And if your memory is not very capricious, Alys, I think it will tell you that it was yourself, not I, who first began talking about marriage this morning, when Arthur’s letters came. Do you remember?”
“Yes; but still—”
“Here we are at Madame de Briancourt’s,” interrupted Mr Cheviott.
“Madame” was at home, and the brother and sister made their way across the spacious entrance, along a corridor, then through a suite of rooms, hardly so beautiful by daylight as when Alys had last seen them on the evening of a grand reception, to a small boudoir at the very end of all. As she passed along, Alys’s thoughts continued in the same direction.
“But still,” she repeated to herself, “I don’t understand Laurence. I am sure he has got something in his head—about Arthur—or about me; still perhaps it is not that: he may have been annoyed about something quite different, and Arthur’s letter may not have anything to do with our going away in such a hurry. Anyway, I can leave it to Laurence; I am not going to bother my head about it, for there may be nothing in it, after all.”
And, two minutes afterwards, her head was full of other things, for there was what, to Alys’s eyes, looked quite a crowd of gayly dressed ladies and gentlemen when the door at the end of the long suite was thrown open, and the brother and sister found themselves, for the moment, the observed of all observers.