‘If you didn’t know, Primrose will be very angry with me,’ said the lady, not seeming terrified, by the way,—­’and Dane will be fit to take my head off.  I had better go away before he comes.’

‘Why, he is not your guardian too, is he?’ said the girl, mockingly.  ’That would prove him a man of more unbounded resources than even I had reason to suppose.’

‘No,’ said Prudentia, ’it was the other way.  I was his once, practically.  Not legally of course.  That was my father.  But do tell me—­have I done something dreadful in telling you this?’

‘I’ll tell you things when you have told me,’ said Wych Hazel.  ’No cross-examination can go on from both sides at once.  But I have only nine minutes now; so your part of the fun, Mrs. Coles, will be cut short, I foresee.’—­Certainly Mrs. Coles might well be puzzled.  But Wych Hazel had met with her match.

‘My dear,’ the lady returned, ’what do you want me to say?  If you know about the will—­that is what I was thinking of, I don’t want to say anything I should not say.  I didn’t know but you knew.’

‘And I didn’t know but you didn’t know,’ said Miss Kennedy, feeling as nearly wild as anybody well could.  ’If you do not, and I do, it is just as well, I daresay.’  And she rose up and crossed the room to an open window from which she could speak to her groom, Lewis, in the distance, ordering up her horse.  Mrs. Coles had a good view of her as she went and returned, steady, erect, and swift.

‘My dear,’ said the lady with that same little laugh, ’I know all about it, and did twelve years ago.  You have nothing to tell me—­except how the plan works.  About that, I confess, I was curious.’

’O I shall not tell you that, Mrs. Coles, unless I hear exactly what you suppose the plan to be.  Exactness is very important in such cases.  And, by-the-by, you must be the lady of whom Mr. Rollo has spoken to me several times,’ said Wych Hazel, with a sudden look.

‘Has he?  What did he say?’

’Several things.  But my horse is coming.  Do you think Mr. Rollo would really object to our discussing the “romance” together?’

Was it cunning or instinct in Wych Hazel?  Mrs. Coles answered with a significant chuckle, but added—­’My dear, you know he has money enough of his own.’

‘Has he?’ said Hazel, seeming to feel the lava crack under her feet, and expecting every moment a hot sulphur bath.

’So of course he is not to be supposed to want any more.  Didn’t you know he was rich?’

‘Never thought about it, if I did.’

’No, I suppose not.  But if you never thought about it, nor about him,—­I declare! it is hard that he should have the disposal of you and all you’ve got.  Rich! his father was rich, and his money has been growing and growing all these years.  I daresay he’ll not be a bad master,—­but yet, it’s rather a hard case, if you never thought of him.’