“Were you lonely?” whispered the gratified Johnnie; “how good, how sweet of you to miss me! you never were out of my mind all day.”
“Oh, that is what all you gentlemen say,” said Matilda, with a little toss of her head. “As for your Fifeshire people,” she went on, “I don’t think much of them. But for a few cards that have been left, one would imagine there was nobody in the county. I don’t know if it is their way here, or if it is that odious Miss Jean.”
“I told you, Matty, when you were so rude to the Heriots—” said Verna.
“Oh, don’t talk to me any more about that!” cried Mrs. Charles; “besides, I never was rude to the Heriots. They chose to take offence and go away; but was that any blame of mine? Was I to put myself at their feet, do you suppose, in my own house?”
“Have you heard anything of them lately?” asked Hepburn, with a certain solemnity in his tone and manner, which he tried vainly to banish. Verna looked up at him quickly, being more open to impression than her sister, and was the first to reply.
“Is there anything to be heard?” she said, looking at him.
Matilda’s languor was a great deal more safe than the keen alertness of the other.
He answered, “No, oh no!—I suppose not, since you have heard nothing,” with some confusion. It was the very best way of broaching the subject; but his confusion was real, and he did not think of that.
“Since we have heard nothing?” said Verna, raising herself to a very upright position. She had never been perfectly easy since Dr. Murray had thrown, quite inadvertently, into her mind that suggestion of another heir.
“Well,” said Hepburn, with some impatience, “I have no double meaning. I supposed there must be nothing to hear as you have not heard. Otherwise, I have just been listening to a story—”