Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/195

182 The girl laughed aloud.

"It is you who have a suspicions way, Hatty! Your imagination is fed by your determination to see everything the poor young man does en noir. His curiosity would have a small field to exercise itself upon with me. I don't receive more than one letter a month."

"You did receive a letter that morning, however, for you told me so. You mentioned that there had been a very heavy storm in London."

"Oh! from my old solicitor-friend. Not a correspondent who would arouse jealousy, supposing it possible that Mr. George suffered from the complaint. But do disabuse your mind, Hatty, of all this nonsense. Mr. George has no curiosity about me. He has never asked me a question."

"He is too sharp. However, it is no use discussing him; we shan't agree. Go to the atelier. I have talked enough. It makes me cough."

The letter from Mr. Twisden, to which reference was here made, was unimportant, but contained one passage of more moment than Elizabeth attached to it. It ran thus—

"Lord Robert Elton called on me yesterday, chiefly, I apprehend, to ask if I could give him any information as to your present whereabouts. I need hardly say that in this he did not succeed. At the same time, I was greatly impressed by his evident anxiety on the subject. He said that he had been much distressed, and so had her Grace, at learning that you had left your uncle's house, to escape—it was whispered in the county—being coerced into a