Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/347

Rh good pastry. Come along with me to Shepherd's Bush. There will be rissoles for dinner to-day as we had joint yesterday; and we will buy a pair of soles on our way."

"I cannot understand," said Arminell. "I came here with your nephew. I suppose you are aware that he is my half-brother."

"Half-fiddlesticks," exclaimed Mr. Welsh. "My dear young lady, you have been carried off your feet by romantic fancies, which at a certain ingenious age inflate the head as carburetted hydrogen does a goldbeaterskin bag. Giles has been in the same condition, but I have pricked the bag and let out the nonsense. Now his head is in a condition of collapse. That which you were told about his parentage is all nonsense."

"Do you mean——" Arminell did not finish the sentence, she was interrupted by Welsh.

"Yes, I do," he said. "I know all the circumstances. I know more about them than my sister Marianne supposes. Marianne is an utter liar, has a physical infirmity, I suppose, which prevents her tongue from being straight. It describes as many curls as a corkscrew on the St. Gothard line. She has about as keen a sense of truth as a Russian diplomatist, and as much bounce as General Boulanger. Now, then—as you see from which direction the wind blows, and where lie the reefs, perhaps you will allow a pilot to come unsignalled on board, and turn your head off the breakers."

"I have made a mistake—a fatal mistake," was all that Arminell could say, dropping her hands at her sides.

"Those are precisely my nephew's words—literally the same; which is not to be wondered at, because you have both fallen together into the same error. Come, I must help you out of your difficulties. What will you do? Go to your aunt? Return home? Or come to Shepherd's