Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/127

 Milly scornfully. "Why not make the most of your luck? I'm sure it's right. After all Providence knows better than anybody. And Jack knows he's got to be a duke."

"Got to be what?" Mary jumped out of her chair.

"You didn't know?"

"Of course, I didn't." She was simply aghast. In a state of excitement which quite baffled Milly, she paced the room.

"You odd creature!" The mantle of the arch dissembler had now descended upon Milly.

Truth to tell, she and her mother had had a shrewd suspicion of Mary's ignorance. They had learned from Wrexham that Jack Dinneford, owing to a series of deaths in a great family, had quite unexpectedly become the next-of-kin to the Duke of Bridport. Such a prospect was so little to the young man's taste that as far as he could he always made a point of keeping the skeleton out of sight. Rightly or wrongly he had not said a word to Mary on the subject, and she with a pride a little overstrained, no doubt, had allowed herself no curiosity in regard to his worldly status. For whatever it might be it was obviously far removed from that of a girl of no family who had to get her own living as well as she could.

The news was stunning. As Mary walked about the room the look on her face was almost tragic.

"I think you ought to have told me," she said at last.

"We thought you knew," was Milly's reply. This was a deliberate story. Mrs. Wren and herself in discussing the romantic news had concluded the exact opposite. But out of a true regard for Mary's welfare, as