“Are you sure of that? Who then told you? Is it likely his friends have got him into the house, under the eye of his pretended father, and he himself know nothing of the manoeuvre?”
“How do you know it was he I meant, lady Ann?”
“You told me so yourself.”
“No; that I did not! I know I didn't, lady Ann! What made you fix on him?”
Lady Ann saw she had committed herself.
“If you did not tell me,” she rejoined, “your peculiar behaviour to the man must have led me to the conclusion!”
“I have never concealed my interest in Mr. Tuke, but—”
“You certainly have not!” interrupted her ladyship, who both suffered in temper and lost in prudence from annoyance at her own blunder.
“Pray, hear me out, lady Ann. What I want to say is, that my friendship for Mr. Tuke had begun long before I learned the fact concerning which I thought I ought to warn you.”
“Friendship!—ah, well!—scarcely decorous!—but as to what you call fact, I would counsel a little caution. I repeat that, if the man be the son of that woman, which may be difficult to prove, it is of no consequence to any one; sir Wilton was never married to his mother—properly married, I mean. I am sorry he should have been born out of wedlock—it is anything but proper; at the same time I cannot be sorry that he will never come between my Arthur and the succession.”