“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Beauchamp at once, his manner softening. “Of course you, too, were misinformed. I wonder—” he hesitated.
“You wonder by whom?” said his hostess. “There is no reason why I should not tell you. It was Mrs Winter who mentioned it to me in a letter, as having been announced, or at least generally believed, at the Winsley Hunt Ball. And I had no reason to disbelieve it. To tell you the truth, it seemed to me to explain things a little.”
Captain Chancellor did not inquire to what things she alluded. He took up the first part of her speech.
“Who is Mrs Winter, may I ask? I don’t think I ever heard of her.”
“She is an old friend of mine,” replied Mrs Dalrymple. “Her husband is Major in the 19th Lancers, now at Sleigham. She wrote to thank me for having asked some of my friends near there to call on her—your sister especially—and in this letter she mentioned Roma’s just announced engagement.”
“But I am surprised you took such a piece of news at secondhand, my dear Mrs Dalrymple,” said Beauchamp. “Had it been true, Roma would have been sure to write to tell you.”
“I don’t know that she would,” replied Roma’s cousin. “We do not write very often, and I know she has a large circle of friends. You might as well say it was strange of me not to write to congratulate her. I did think of doing so, but other things put it out of my head. Eugenia Laurence’s illness for one thing—I was very anxious about her—and to tell you the real truth, Beauchamp,” she went on, with a sudden change of tone, and addressing him as she had been accustomed to do in his boyhood, “I did not feel very able to congratulate either you or Roma as heartily as I should have wished to do in such circumstances, considering all I had seen and observed during your stay at Wareborough. I believe now I may have done you great injustice, and I fear poor dear Eugenia had suffered unnecessarily through me. But I think you will both forgive me,” and she smiled up at him with all her old cordiality.
Captain Chancellor smiled too, with visible consciousness of no small magnanimity in so doing.
“All’s well that ends well,” he answered lightly, “though certainly in such matters it is best to take nothing on hearsay, and to be slow to pronounce on apparently inconsistent, conduct,” he added rather mysteriously. “I must confess, however, that I can’t understand Miss Laurence believing this absurd report—if she had done so till she met me again even, but after our—our conversation this morning?” he looked inquiringly at Mrs Dalrymple.
“Yes, she believes it at the present moment,” replied she. “You said something which seemed to confirm it—about ‘breaking ties,’ or something of the kind.”