"What were they?" he asked.
"Why, you had just been saying something, and Dr. Nicholls said, 'If
he has got aneurism of the aorta his days are numbered.'"
"Well. Anything more?"
"Yes; you said, 'I hope to God I may be mistaken; but there is a
pretty clear indication of symptoms, in my opinion.'"
"How do you know we were speaking of Osborne Hamley?" he asked;
perhaps in hopes of throwing her off the scent. But as soon as she
perceived that he was descending to her level of subterfuge, she took
courage, and said in quite a different tone to the cowed one which
she had been using:
"Oh! I know. I heard his name mentioned by you both before I began to
listen."
"Then you own you did listen?"
"Yes," said she, hesitating a little now.
"And pray how do you come to remember so exactly the name of the
disease spoken of?"
"Because I went--now don't be angry, I really can't see any harm in
what I did--"
"Then, don't deprecate anger. You went--"
"Into the surgery, and looked it out. Why might not I?"
Mr. Gibson did not answer--did not look at her. His face was very
pale, and both forehead and lips were contracted. At length he roused
himself, sighed, and said,--
"Well! I suppose as one brews one must bake."
"I don't understand what you mean," pouted she.
"Perhaps not," he replied. "I suppose that it was what you heard on
that occasion that made you change your behaviour to Roger Hamley?
I've noticed how much more civil you were to him of late."
"If you mean that I have ever got to like him as much as Osborne,
you are very much mistaken; no, not even though he has offered to
Cynthia, and is to be my son-in-law."
"Let me know the whole affair. You overheard,--I will own that it was
Osborne about whom we were speaking, though I shall have something to
say about that presently--and then, if I understand you rightly, you
changed your behaviour to Roger, and made him more welcome to this
house than you had ever done before, regarding him as proximate heir
to the Hamley estates?"
"I don't know what you mean by 'proximate.'"
"Go into the surgery, and look into the dictionary, then," said he,
losing his temper for the first time during the conversation.
"I knew," said she through sobs and tears, "that Roger had taken
a fancy to Cynthia; any one might see that; and as long as Roger
was only a younger son, with no profession, and nothing but his
fellowship, I thought it right to discourage him, as any one would
who had a grain of common sense in them; for a clumsier, more common,
awkward, stupid fellow I never saw--to be called 'county,' I mean."