She considered this. “What has happened?” she asked after a pause.
“Well, the claim to the peerage, if nothing else——”
“What claim?” she asked. “Whose claim? What peerage? I am quite in the dark.”
He stared. He did not believe her. “Your uncle’s claim,” he said curtly. Then as she still looked a question, “You must know,” he continued, “that your uncle claimed the title which Lord Audley bears, and the property which goes with it. And that the decision was only given against him three months ago.”
“I know nothing of it,” she said. “I never heard of the claim.”
“Really?” he replied. He hardly deigned to veil his incredulity. “Yet if your uncle had succeeded you were the next heir.”
“I?”
“Yes, you.”
Then her face shook his unbelief. She turned slowly and painfully red. “Is it possible?” she said. “You are not playing with me?”
“Certainly I am not. Do you mean that Lord Audley never told you that? Never told you that you were interested?”