I laughed, told her to let me know how much he spoilt her in five years' time, and left her. For a servant had interrupted our conversation with the announcement that Mr Mavor, who had returned from town, would be glad to speak to me.
"Hughie? how absurd!" Daphne said, who wanted to go on talking to me about her lover. "As if Hughie could possibly have a thing to say to you which would not keep, Hannah!"
"It is to make me an offer of marriage I have not the slightest doubt," I told her, being of an age when a woman can make jokes of that kind about herself and pretend not to feel the heartprick.
I found the head of the house in the room which had been turned into a museum of objects of art--precious and not precious--for exhibition on the morrow. I had known the young man from boyhood, and I saw at once that something was amiss. He had left for town before my arrival that morning, and this was our first meeting, but he forgot to come forward and put out his hand. He stalked past me, instead, and banged the door by which I had entered; then he seized me by the arm.
"Hannah," he said, "I want to talk to you. I want your advice. We're in a devil of a mess."
"It's the wedding-dress, or the wedding-cake!" I said, staring at him. "One of them hasn't come!"
"It's about Marston. Something I only heard to-day. He must not be allowed to marry my sister."
He took his hand from my arm, laid it on one of the tables spread with the presents. There was a faint ringing of silver and china to show the hand was not steady. He is a self-contained, sturdily-built, matter-of-fact young man in the early twenties; quite unlike his sister, whose appearance is elegantly fragile, who is filled with nerves, and sensitive to the fingertips.
"I got a letter this morning," he went on, and for a moment fumbled in his coat-pocket as if with the intention, quickly relinquished, of showing it. "It was from a woman; telling me of certain incidents in Marston's career."
"It isn't. Once for all, don't waste time in saying that. I went up this morning to the address she gave me. I saw her. She told me worse than she wrote--poor wretch! I didn't take it for gospel. I got confirmation, all round. There isn't room for the shadow of a doubt. She left her husband a year ago for Marston----"