“Because upon yours depend those of your visitor—at least so I suppose,” answered Beauchamp, coolly. “Miss Laurence is staying with you. If she stays here till next week, I shall stay too; if she goes I shall probably go too.”
“Where?” asked Mrs Dalrymple, looking up at him with a puzzled yet anxious expression on her comely face.
“To Wareborough! to ask her father to consent to her engagement to me,” he replied stoutly. “I shall either see him or write to him at once from here.”
“But—” began Mrs Dalrymple, coming to a dead stop.
“But what?”
“You can’t marry two people.”
“Certainly not. Has any one been telling you I intended doing so,” he replied, beginning, in spite of his vexation, to laugh.
“Yes,” answered Mrs Dalrymple, naïvely. “At least, not exactly that. But I was told some time ago that you were to be married to my cousin Roma next month, and of course I believed it. Eugenia thinks so too.”
“Eugenia thinks so too,” repeated Captain Chancellor, his face darkening. “How can she possibly think so? And whoever told her such an infernal falsehood, I should like to know?” he went on angrily, for it was unspeakably annoying to him that any shadow, however distorted, of his late relations to Roma should thus follow him about—should dim the brightness of the little-looked-for consolation that had offered itself.
Mrs Dalrymple was by no means taken aback by this outburst. “It was I that told Eugenia,” she said simply.