‘What is it, Anne? What is it, my dear? Something has happened?’ he said.
‘No, nothing of consequence. That is not true,’ she said, hurriedly; ‘it is something, and something of consequence. I have not said anything about it to them. They suspect, that is all; and it does not matter to them; but I want to tell you. Mr. Loseby, you were talking to-night of Mr. Douglas. It is about Mr. Douglas I want to speak to you.’
He looked at her very anxiously, taking her hand into his. ‘Are you going to be married?’
Anne laughed. She was playing Anne more than ever; but, on the whole, very successfully. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘quite the reverse——’
‘Anne! do you mean that he has—that you have—that it is broken off?’
‘The last form is the best,’ she said. ‘It is all a little confused just yet. I can’t tell if he has, or if I have. But yes—I must do him justice: it is certainly not his doing. I am wholly responsible myself. It has come to an end.’
She looked into his face wistfully, evidently fearing what he would say, deprecating, entreating. If only nothing might be said! And Mr. Loseby was confounded. He had not been kept up like the others to the course of affairs.
‘Anne, you strike me dumb. You take away my breath. What! he whom you have sacrificed everything for: he who has cost you all you have in the world? If it is a caprice, my dear girl, it is a caprice utterly incomprehensible; a caprice I cannot understand.’
‘That is exactly how to call it,’ she said, eagerly: ‘a caprice, an unpardonable caprice. If Rose had done it, I should have whipped her, I believe; but it is I, the serious Anne, the sensible one, that have done it. This is all there is to say. I found myself out, fortunately, before it was too late. And I wanted you to know.’
In this speech her powers almost failed her. She forgot her part. She played not Anne, but someone else, some perfectly artificial character, which her audience was not acquainted with, and Mr. Loseby was startled. He pushed away his spectacles, and contracted his brows, and looked at her with his keen, short-sighted eyes, which, when they could see anything, saw very clearly. But with all his gazing he could not make the mystery out. She faced him now, after that one little failure, with Anne’s very look and tone, a slight, fugitive, somewhat tremulous smile about her mouth, her eyes wistful, deprecating blame; but always very pale: that was the worst of it, that was the thing least like herself.