"Miss Deane, you forget yourself!" said Lady Dudgeon, with severity. "You forget that Miss Lloyd is my guest."
"I ask your ladyship's pardon if I have committed any offence. I was but making a simple statement of fact."
"That has yet to be proved. But, in any case, the statement was most offensively made." Then she patted Eleanor's cheek affectionately. "Keep up your spirits, my dear. Don't get downhearted. There must be a mistake somewhere. Miss Deane's story sounds far too romantic to be true."
"I believe your ladyship is sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Kelvin," said Olive, not without a touch of sternness, "to be quite aware that he is not a man who would be likely to send me to Stammars on such an errand as this unless he were perfectly sure of the facts he had to go upon. Had there been any doubt in the matter, I should not have been here to-day."
"Oh, Lady Dudgeon, it is not that I fear poverty!" cried Eleanor. "Don't think that. You know that I have never really valued the riches that were said to be mine."
"That's true enough," murmured her ladyship.
"It is the thought of having lost the dearest and kindest man that ever breathed that wrings my heart. I have lost--my father!"
"Hush, my dear--hush! Even if it should turn out that you are not Mr. Lloyd's daughter in reality, you will always have the consolation of knowing that he loved you as such. Nothing can deprive you of that." Then turning to Olive, she added: "Since Mr. Kelvin has made this very clever discovery--which, mind you, as I said before, has yet got to be proved--he is, doubtless, clever enough to have found out the person to whom Mr. Lloyd's property really does belong?"
"The heir-at-law is a certain Mr. Gerald Warburton, a nephew of Mr. Lloyd, but a person whom Mr. Kelvin has never seen."
"But a person with whom he will at once place himself in communication?"