"It seems to me," she said, "as if Blanche is acting very artfully."
"And wishes so to place matters that she may take me or leave me? Is it not so?"
"It is, I am afraid, a kind of duplicity which does not augur well for your future happiness; and is a bad reply to your own candor and honesty, Arthur. Do you know I think, I think—I scarcely like to say what I think," said Laura, with a deep blush; but of course the blushing young lady yielded to her cousin's persuasion, and expressed what her thoughts were. "It looks to me, Arthur, as if there might be—there might be somebody else," said Laura, with a repetition of the blush.
"And if there is," broke in Arthur, "and if I am free once again, will the best and dearest of all women—"
"You are not free, dear brother," Laura said, calmly. "You belong to another; of whom I own it grieves me to think ill. But I can't do otherwise. It is very odd that in this letter she does not urge you to tell her the reason why you have broken arrangements which would have been so advantageous to you; and avoids speaking on the subject. She somehow seems to write as if she knows her father's secret."
Pen said, "Yes, she must know it;" and told the story, which he had just heard from Huxter, of the interview at Shepherd's Inn. "It was not so that she described the meeting," said Laura; and, going to her desk, produced from it that letter of Blanche's which mentioned her visit to Shepherd's Inn. "Another disappointment—only the Chevalier Strong and a friend of his in the room." This was all that Blanche had said. "But she was bound to keep her father's secret, Pen," Laura added. "And yet, and yet—it is very puzzling."
The puzzle was this, that for three weeks after this eventful discovery Blanche had been, only too eager about her dearest Arthur; was urging, as strongly as so much modesty could urge, the completion of the happy arrangements which were to make her Arthur's forever; and now it seemed as if something had interfered to mar these happy arrangements—as if Arthur poor was not quite so agreeable to Blanche as Arthur rich and a member of Parliament—as if there was some mystery. At last she said—
"Tunbridge Wells is not very far off, is it, Arthur? Hadn't you better go and see her?"
They had been in town a week and neither had thought of that simple plan before!