“Colonel Kingsward is enemy enough.”
“Ah! Colonel Kingsward. I have no reason, however, to think that he would do a dishonourable action.”
“What do you call intercepting letters, Aubrey?”
“It is very antiquated and out of date, but I don’t know that it need be called dishonourable; and he has a high idea of his authority; but to make a false representation of another man——”
“Aubrey, these distinctions are too fine for me. There is only one thing that I can do. I will now go and interview Colonel Kingsward. If he knows of anything new, he will soon reveal it to me. If he goes only over the old ground, then we may be sure that your fiancée has been told something in her own ear—something apart from her father—which she has betrayed to no one. Unless, perhaps, it was got from the mother——”
“Not a word about the mother. She is dead, and she is sacred; and besides she was the last, the very last——”
“You have yourself said she was very weak, Aubrey.”
“Weak so far as resisting her husband was concerned, but incapable of an unkind word; incapable of any treachery or falsehood; a creature, both in body and soul, whom you could almost see through.”
Mrs. Leigh shook her head a little.
“I know those transparent people,” she said. “They are not always so—— But never mind; I am going to interview Colonel Kingsward now.”