“How queer that he knew your name if you have never met him before,” said Mrs Selby. “But I dare say it’s through the Flores-Carters; they’re such great friends of mine, you know, and they are staying at Laxter’s Hill as well as the Southwold party.”
“Yes,” Despard agreed, “he had evidently heard of you.”
“And of you too in that case. People do so chatter in the country. The Carters are dying to get you there. They have got the Southwolds to promise to go to them next week. They—the Carter girls—are perfectly wild about Lady Margaret. I think it would be better taste not to make up to her so much; it does look as if it was because she was what she is, though I know it isn’t really that. They get up these fits of enthusiasm. And she is very nice—not very pretty, you know, but wonderfully nice and unspoilt, considering.”
“Unspoilt,” repeated Despard. He was glad to keep his sister talking about indifferent matters. “I don’t see that poor Lord Southwold’s daughter has any reason to be spoilt.”
“Oh, dear yes—didn’t you know? I thought you knew everything of that kind. It appears that she is a tremendous heiress; I forget the figures. The fortune comes from her aunt’s husband. Her mother’s elder sister married an enormously wealthy man, and as they had no children or near relations on his side, he left all to this girl. Of course she and her father have always known it, but it has been kept very quiet. They have lived in the country six months of the year, and travelled the other six. She has been most carefully brought up and splendidly educated. But she has never been ‘out’ in society at all till this year.”
“I never remember hearing of them in town,” said Despard.
“Oh, Lord Southwold himself never goes out. He is dreadfully delicate—heart-disease, I think. But she—Lady Margaret—will be heard of now. It has all come out about her fortune now that he has come into the title. His cousin, the last earl, only died two months ago.”
“And,” said Despard, with a strange sensation, as if he were listening to some one else speaking rather than speaking himself, “till he came into the title, what was he called? He was the last man’s cousin, you say?”
“Yes, of course; he was Mr Fforde—Fforde with two ‘f’s’ and an ‘e,’ you know. It’s the family name of the Southwolds. That young man—the one you spoke to—is Mr Conrad Fforde, as I told you. They say that—”
But a glance at her brother made her hesitate.