"That is easily understood," said her ladyship. "Miss Lloyd at that time was supposed to be worth twenty thousand pounds. Mr. Pomeroy's audacious candour is quite refreshing."
"I will be candid," said Gerald with an amused smile. "For me to see and become acquainted with Miss Lloyd was to love her, and when that fact became patent to me, it would not do to sail any longer under false colours. I told Miss Lloyd that I loved her--the confession slipped out one evening unawares--but the first time I met her afterwards I confessed to her what my reasons had been for entering this house, asking her at the same time to forgive the wrong I had done her, and to forget the words I had said. From that day to this Miss Lloyd and I have been good friends: nothing more."
"Bless us all! what goings on under ones very nose, and I to know nothing about them!" cried Sir Thomas.
"But this morning altered the position of affairs entirely," went on Gerald. "You, sir, a little while ago told me what Miss Deane had just told you--that Miss Lloyd was Miss Lloyd no longer, and had nothing in the world but her own sweet self that she could call her own. This being the case, I at once sought Miss Lloyd--found her--told her that my love was still unchanged, and would not leave her till I had won from her a promise to become my wife. That promise I hold, and I shall claim its fulfilment from her before she and I are many weeks older."
"Well done, Pomeroy! That's manly--that's as it should be!" exclaimed Sir Thomas. "I knew you would turn out a decent fellow at bottom."
Her ladyship was slightly scandalised. "My dear!" she pleaded, "you are too enthusiastic. You let your heart run away with your head."
She drew her skirts round her, pushed back her chair a little, and perching her double eye-glass on the bridge of her high nose, she stared curiously at Eleanor.
Lady Dudgeon's feelings just now were of a very mixed kind. Her affection for the girl, the growth of long years, struggled with her very natural vexation at finding how thoroughly she had been hoodwinked, how completely she had been ignored in the matter by everybody. On the other hand, there was a spice of romance about the affair that appealed to some hidden feeling, of whose existence she herself was hardly aware.