Lady Betty coloured violently, and became on a sudden very shy--like most young authors. "Well," she said, "I wanted to be in the--in the swim with you, don't you know."
Mr. Stafford murmured, "Oh!"
Thanks to his talk with Atlay he read the secret of that sudden shyness. And confusion poured over him more and more. It caused him to give way to impulse in a manner which a moment's reflection would have led him to avoid.
"Then it was not you," he exclaimed unwarily, "who sent Pilgrimstone's terms to the Times?"
"I?" she exclaimed in an indescribable tone, and with eyes like saucers. "I?" she repeated.
"Gad!" cried Sir Horace; and he looked about for a way of escape.
"I?" she continued, struggling between wrath and wonder. "I betray you to the Times! And you thought so, Stafford?"
There was silence in the room for a long moment during which the cool statesman, the hard man of the world, did not know where to turn his eyes. "There were circumstances--several circumstances," Mr. Stafford muttered at last, "which made--which forced me to think so."
"And Mr. Atlay thought so?" she asked. He nodded. "Oh, that tame cat!" she cried, her eyes flashing.
Then she seemed to meditate, while her husband gazed at her, a prey to conflicting emotions, and Sir Horace made himself as small as possible. "I see," she continued in a different tone. "Only--only if you thought that, why did you never say anything? Why did you not scold me, beat me, Stafford? I do not--I do not understand."