"Do you think I would remain an instant in
the company of any man whom I suspected of
such baseness as that?" she asked, angrily.

I liked to feel her hearty indignation flash out
on me in that way. We see so much malice and
so little indignation in my profession.

"In that case," I said, "excuse me if I tell
you, in our legal phrase, that you are travelling
out of the record. Whatever the consequences
may be, Sir Percival has a right to expect that
your sister should carefully consider her engagement
from every reasonable point of view before
she claims her release from it. If that unlucky
letter has prejudiced her against him, go at once,
and tell her that he has cleared himself in your
eyes and in mine. What objection can she urge
against him after that? What excuse can she
possibly have for changing her mind about a
man whom she virtually accepted for her
husband more than two years ago?"

"In the eyes of law and reason, Mr. Gilmore,
no excuse, I dare say. If she still hesitates,
and if I still hesitate, you must attribute our
strange conduct, if you like, to caprice in both
cases, and we must bear the imputation as well
as we can."

With those words, she suddenly rose, and left
me. When a sensible woman has a serious
question put to her, and evades it by a flippant
answer, it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred, that she has something to conceal.
I returned to the perusal of the newspaper,
strongly suspecting that Miss Halcombe and
Miss Fairlie had a secret between them which
they were keeping from Sir Percival and keeping
from me. I thought this hard on both of
us—especially on Sir Percival.

My doubts—or, to speak more correctly, my
convictions—were confirmed by Miss
Halcombe's language and manner, when I saw her
again, later in the day. She was suspiciously
brief and reserved in telling me the result of
her interview with her sister. Miss Fairlie, it
appeared, had listened quietly while the affair of
the letter was placed before her in the right
point of view; but when Miss Halcombe next
proceeded to say that the object of Sir
Percival' s visit at Limmeridge was to prevail on
her to let a day be fixed for the marriage, she
checked all further reference to the subject by
begging for time. If Sir Percival would
consent to spare her for the present, she would
undertake to give him his final answer, before
the end of the year. She pleaded for this delay
with such anxiety and agitation, that Miss
Halcombe had promised to use her influence, if
necessary, to obtain it; and there, at Miss
Fairlie's earnest entreaty, all further discussion
of the marriage question had ended.

The purely temporary arrangement thus
proposed might have been convenient enough to the
young lady; but it proved somewhat
embarrassing to the writer of these lines. That
morning's post had brought a letter from my
partner, which obliged me to return to town the
next day, by the afternoon train. It was
extremely probable that I should find no second
opportunity of presenting myself at Limmeridge
House during the remainder of the year. In
that case, supposing Miss Fairlie ultimately
decided on holding to her engagement, my necessary
personal communication with her, before I
drew her settlement, would become something
like a downright impossibility; and we should
be obliged to commit to writing questions
which ought always to be discussed on both
sides by word of mouth. I said nothing about
this difficulty, until Sir Percival had been
consulted on the subject of the desired delay. He
was too gallant a gentleman not to grant the
request immediately. When Miss Halcombe
informed me of this, I told her that I must
absolutely speak to her sister, before I left
Limmeridge; and it was, therefore, arranged
that I should see Miss Fairlie in her own sitting-
room, the next morning. She did not come
down to dinner, or join us in the evening.
Indisposition was the excuse; and I thought Sir
Percival looked, as well he might, a little
annoyed when he heard of it.

The next morning, as soon as breakfast was
over, I went up to Miss Fairlie's sitting-room.
The poor girl looked so pale and sad, and came
forward to welcome me so readily and prettily,
that the resolution to lecture her on her caprice
and indecision, which I had been forming all
the way up-stairs, failed me on the spot. I led
her back to the chair from which she had risen,
and placed myself opposite to her. Her cross-
grained pet greyhound was in the room, and I
fully expected a barking and snapping reception.
Strange to say, the whimsical little brute falsified
my expectations by jumping into my lap,
and poking its sharp muzzle familiarly into my
hand the moment I sat down.

"You used often to sit on my knee when you
were a child, my dear," I said, "and now your
little dog seems determined to succeed you in
the vacant throne. Is that pretty drawing your
doing?"

I pointed to a little album, which lay on the
table by her side, and which she had evidently
been looking over when I came in. The page
that lay open had a small water-colour landscape
very neatly mounted on it. This was the drawing
which had suggested my question: an idle
question enough—but how could I begin to talk
of business to her the moment I opened my lips?

"No," she said, looking away from the drawing
rather confusedly; "it is not my doing."

Her fingers had a restless habit, which I
remembered in her, as a child, of always playing
with the first thing that came to hand, whenever
any one was talking to her. On this occasion
they wandered to the album, and toyed absently
about the margin of the little water-colour drawing.
The expression of melancholy deepened on
her face. She did not look at the drawing, or
look at me. Her eyes moved uneasily from
object to object in the room; betraying plainly
that she suspected what my purpose was in
coming to speak to her. Seeing that, I thought
it best to get to the purpose with as little delay
as possible.