Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/194

 HE BECOMES SOMEBODY.

kept to herself that day. At lunch she had not much to say to her step-mother, and Lord Lamerton was out. Giles came down, and his mother talked to him and to the tutor, and seemed not to observe Arminell's silence.

The girl was unhappy. She had given way to a momentary weakness, or wave of regret at the thought of her father's unworthiness, but the feeling predominating in her mind was indignation that her mother should have been left unacquainted with the previous conduct of my lord. She repeated to herself, "Most certainly she never knew it, or she would never have married him, even if she knew that ceremony was worthless that had been performed over him and Marianne."

Arminell had idealised her mother. The girl had an affectionate heart, but she concentrated her affection on the memory of her mother. Ever since her father's re-marriage there had brooded over her a sense of wrong done to the memory of the mother. How could my lord, after having loved such a woman, take to himself his present wife?

Arminell was by no means easy in mind about Jingles' assurance that he would not speak. He had given the same assurance, as Mrs. Saltren had told her, to his mother, and had broken his promise. She resolved to exert her