“Suppose,” repeated Captain Beverley, hastily interrupting her. “Are not you sure of going? I should not have promised to go had I not thought you were certain to be there.”
“Are you going to the ball from Romary?” asked Mary, coming up to where they were standing, before Lilias had time to reply.
“I don’t know exactly,” replied Captain Beverley. “I am not sure what I shall do.”
Mary looked up in surprise, and Lilias saw the look.
“Mary and I will have a very long drive,” she said. “You know we are going with Mrs Greville from Uxley.”
Captain Beverley’s face cleared.
“I shall get there somehow,” he said, brightly, “and you must not forget the dances you have promised me, Miss Western.” And then he said good-bye again, and really took his departure. Lilias’s good spirits did not desert her through the evening, and Mary was glad to see it, and tried to banish the misgivings that had been left in her own mind by her conversation with her sister. But she did not succeed in doing so quite effectually.
“I wonder,” she said to herself—“I wonder why Captain Beverley did not order the dog-cart to come here to meet him. And I wonder, too, why he says so little about the Cheviotts. Under the circumstances, it would be only natural that we should know something of them—he has so often said Miss Cheviott was just like a sister to him.”
“Miss Cheviott is to be at the ball, I suppose,” she said to Lilias the next day. “Does she count as one of the three beauties we heard about, do you think?”
“I suppose so,” said Lilias, rather shortly.