“But she is undoubtedly very clever to come and see for herself,” was Mrs. Weguelin’s next comment.
Mrs. Gregory’s face, as she replied to her companion, took on a censorious and superior expression. “You’ll remember, Julia, that I told Josephine St. Michael it was what they had to expect.”
“But it was not Josephine, my dear, who at any time approved of taking such a course. It was Eliza’s whole doing.”
It was fairly raining oracles round me, and they quite resembled, for all the help and light they contained, their Delphic predecessors.
“And yet Eliza,” said Mrs. Gregory, “in the face of it, this very morning, repeated her eternal assertion that we shall all see the marriage will not take place.”
“Eliza,” murmured Mrs. Weguelin, “rates few things more highly than her own judgment.”
Mrs. Gregory mused. “Yet she is often right when she has no right to be right.”
I could not bear it any longer, and I said, “I heard to-day that Miss Rieppe had broken her engagement.”
“And where did you hear that nonsense?” asked Mrs. Gregory.
My heart leaped, and I told her where.