The girl's heart gave a bound—but that could wait; just now there was other business on hand.
'Well,' she said, 'is that the opening chapter? What comes next? I cannot review in part.'
'But didn't you know that, my dear? Did they keep it from you?'
Wych Hazel laughed,—Mrs. Coles was too much a stranger to her to know how,—and took out her watch. 'I must go in ten minutes,' she said,—'and I do want to hear this "romance," first. One's private affairs get such fresh little touches from strange hands! Just see what a heading for your next chapter, Mrs. Coles,—"N.B. The heroine did not know herself." Will it take you more than ten minutes?' she added, persuasively.
'If you didn't know, Primrose will be very angry with me,' said the lady, not seeming terrified, by the way,—'and Dane will be fit to take my head off. I had better go away before he comes.'
'Why, he is not your guardian too, is he?' said the girl, mockingly. 'That would prove him a man of more unbounded resources than even I had reason to suppose.'
'No,' said Prudentia, 'it was the other way. I was his once, practically. Not legally of course. That was my father. But do tell me—have I done something dreadful in telling you this?'
'I'll tell you things when you have told me,' said Wych Hazel. 'No cross-examination can go on from both sides at once. But I have only nine minutes now; so your part of the fun, Mrs. Coles, will be cut short, I foresee.'—Certainly Mrs. Coles might well be puzzled. But Wych Hazel had met with her match.
'My dear,' the lady returned, 'what do you want me to say? If you know about the will—that is what I was thinking of, I don't want to say anything I should not say. I didn't know but you knew.'
'And I didn't know but you didn't know,' said Miss Kennedy, feeling as nearly wild as anybody well could. 'If you do not, and I do, it is just as well, I daresay.' And she rose up and crossed the room to an open window from which she could speak to her groom, Lewis, in the distance, ordering up her horse. Mrs. Coles had a good view of her as she went and returned, steady, erect, and swift.