"Because I heard him asking Nola about Mr. Augustus Sheppard the other day, mamma, in our drawing-room."
"He couldn't have known this, I think," Miss Blanchet said.
"Oh, no, I suppose not; but he knows him, and he'll tell us all about him. Why wouldn't Nola have him, Miss Blanchet?"
"He is rather a formal sort of person, and heavy, and not the least in the world poetic or romantic; and Minola does not like him at all. She doesn't think his feelings are very deep; but there I am sure she is wrong," the poetess added emphatically. "She has never had occasion to make a study of human feelings as others have."
"You think he has deep feelings?" Mrs. Money asked, turning the full light of her melancholy eyes upon Mary, and with her whole soul already in the question.
"Oh, yes; I know he has. I know that he will persevere, and will try to make Minola marry him still. He is a man I should be afraid of if he were disappointed. I should indeed."
"Mamma, don't you think we had better have Nola to stay with us for a while?" Lucy asked. "Miss Blanchet could describe him, or get a photograph, and we could give orders that no such man was ever to be admitted if he should call and ask to see her. Some one should always go out with her, or she should only go in the carriage. I dread this man; I do indeed. Miss Blanchet is quite right, and she knows more than she says, I dare say. Such terrible things have happened, you know. I read in a paper the other day of a young man who fell in love with a girl—in the country it was, I think, or in Spain perhaps, or somewhere—and she would not marry him; and he hid himself with a long dagger, and when she was going to church he stabbed her several times."
"I don't think Mr. Augustus Sheppard would be likely to do anything of that kind," Miss Blanchet said. "He's a very respectable man, and a steady, grave sort of person."
"You never can tell," Lucy declared. "When those quiet men are in love and disappointed, they are dreadful! I've read a great many things just like that in books."
"Well, dear," Mrs. Money said, "we'll ask your papa. If he knows this gentleman—this person—he can tell us what sort of man he is. It doesn't seem that he is in London now."