‘Well,—he has not,—as yet; but he may be soon.’
‘What’s in the wind?’
‘Mr Lessingham.’
She dropped her voice,—and her eyes. For the moment I did not catch her meaning.
‘What?’
‘Your friend, Mr Lessingham.’
‘Excuse me, Miss Lindon, but I am by no means sure that anyone is entitled to call Mr Lessingham a friend of mine.’
‘What!—Not when I am going to be his wife?’
That took me aback. I had had my suspicions that Paul Lessingham was more with Marjorie than he had any right to be, but I had never supposed that she could see anything desirable in a stick of a man like that. Not to speak of a hundred and one other considerations,—Lessingham on one side of the House, and her father on the other; and old Lindon girding at him anywhere and everywhere—with his high-dried Tory notions of his family importance,—to say nothing of his fortune.
I don’t know if I looked what I felt,—if I did, I looked uncommonly blank.