"A question so plainly put, Mr. Drelincourt, ought to be met by a plain answer. Is not that so?"
"Why, certainly, Mrs. Jenwyn."
"Now that Mrs. Drelincourt is unhappily no more, there seems to me no reason why I should any longer refrain from mentioning to you a certain conclusion which I could not help arriving at on the occasion of Mr. Guy Ormsby's visit at the Towers a few months ago."
Mr. Drelincourt sat up in his chair. "Go on, please," was all he said.
"To such an extent and so openly did Mrs. Drelincourt make it her business to throw Miss Anna and Mr. Guy together, that at length I could not help having my eyes opened to the ulterior object she had in view. What at first had been nothing more than suspicion was turned into certainty by a few words between brother and sister which I accidentally happened to overhear."
"And that object was--"
"The marriage--not just now, but after Miss Anna shall have come of age--of the two young people."
It was not often that Drelincourt was betrayed into an expression of surprise, but he was on this occasion.
"What!" he exclaimed. "Scheme to wed her brother to a girl mentally afflicted as my poor sister is? It would be nothing less than monstrous."
"Mrs. Drelincourt, sir, professed to believe, with Dr. Pounceby, the London specialist, that Miss Anna would grow out of her affliction in the course of a few years."