“Despard, is your head worse?” she asked anxiously.
“It comes on by fits and starts,” he replied. “But don’t mind; go on speaking. What were you going to say?”
“Oh, only about young Mr Fforde. They say he is to marry Lady Margaret; they are only second cousins. But I don’t think he looks good enough for her. She seems such a womanly, nice-feeling girl. We had just been introduced when Mr Fforde came up with your message, and she wanted him to go back to you at once. But he said you would be gone already, and I—well, I didn’t quite believe about your head being so bad, and perhaps I seemed very cool about it, for Lady Margaret really looked quite vexed. Wasn’t it nice of her? The Carters had been telling her about us evidently. I think she was rather disappointed not to see the famous Despard Norreys, do you know? I rather wonder you never met her this summer in town, though perhaps you would scarcely have remarked her just as Miss Fforde, for she isn’t—”
But an exclamation from Despard startled her.
“Maddie,” he said, “don’t you understand? It must be she—she, this Lady Margaret—the great heiress! Good heavens!”
Mrs Selby almost screamed.
“Despard!” was all she could say. But she quickly recovered herself. “Well, after all,” she went on, “I don’t see that there’s any harm done. She will know that you were absolutely disinterested, and surely that will go a long way. But—just to think of it! Oh, Despard, fancy your saying that you half thought she was going to be a governess! Oh, dear, how extraordinary! And I that was so regretting that you had not met her! What a good thing you did not—I mean what a good thing that my letter showing your ignorance was written and sent before you knew who she was! Don’t you see how lucky it was?”
She turned round, her eyes sparkling with excitement and eagerness. But there was no response in Mr Norreys’ face; on the contrary, its expression was such that Mrs Selby’s own face grew pale with dread.
“Despard,” she said, “why do you look like that? You are not going to say that now, because she is an heiress—just because of money,” with a tone of supreme contempt, “that you will give it up? You surely—”
But Mr Norreys interrupted her.