“Oh, I see; but I don’t understand how it was that Alice seemed to take such a lively interest in ‘the Don,’ as she calls him, while you can scarcely remember that he is still at Elmington. She never wrote a letter without singing his praises.”
“As I said just now, ‘the Don’ has the good taste to admire Mr. Frobisher.”
“Ah, that accounts for Alice’s liking ‘the Don.’ Am I to suppose” (something in Mary’s manner made her mother feel sure that she was on the right track)—“am I to suppose, then, that you are interested in some one whom the Don has not the good taste to admire?”
“You are a marvellous guesser, to be sure,” cried Mary, with a bright laugh, and springing from the lounge and into her mother’s lap.
“Ah, I have hit the nail on the head, have I?” asked Mrs. Rolfe, with a pleased look of conscious sagacity.
“What a subtle brain is here!” continued Mary, smoothing back the white hairs from her mother’s forehead, and gazing tenderly into her loving eyes.
“And so you have been hiding something from your poor old mother? But you are going to tell her now, aren’t you?” added she, coaxingly. “Who is this person in whom you are interested?”
“Mary Rolfe!”
“Yourself? Ah, I see. Mr. Smith does not like you, and therefore you do not fancy Mr. Smith. Am I right?”
“Not entirely.”