“Why should not you be in earnest? She does nothing but button her glove. But I don’t know what Miss Pimpernel has to do with it,” said Arthur, putting on an air of surprise. He knew very well what she had to do with it. He understood Clare’s meaning at once, and he knew also that there was a certain truth in the suggestion. If he was utterly foiled concerning herself, he was by no means sure that Alice Pimpernel was not the next best; but he put on an air of surprise, and gravely waited for a reply. Clare, however, was not quite able to reply. She smiled, and waited till he should say more. It was the wisest and the safest way.
“I think, after what you have implied, I must tell you why I am at the Pimpernels,” he said, after a pause. “It was very silly of me, of course; but I never thought---- In short, I did not know you were so consistent. I thought you would do as other people did, and that you visited them like the rest of the world. All this, Miss Arden, I told you before; but I don’t suppose it was worth remembering. When your brother turned me out----”
“Mr. Arden, you forget yourself; Edgar never turned any one out. Why should he?” said Clare; and then she stopped, and said to herself--“Yes; it was quite true.”
“Of course, I could not expect he was to stay here for me; but he did turn me out. And very right too,” said Arthur, sadly. “He divined me better than you did. Had I been Edgar, and he me, I should have done just the same.”
“I do not understand you, Mr. Arden,” said Clare, raising her lofty head. “Edgar is the very soul of courtesy and kindness. You do not understand my brother.” She knew so well that she was talking nonsense, and he knew it so well, that here Clare paused, confused, not able to go on with her fiction under his very eye.
“Well,” he said, with a sigh, shaking his head, “we must not discuss that question. I could throw light upon it perhaps, but for the present I dare not. And I thought in my stupidity that the Red House was near Arden. I find it is a thousand miles away. Is not that strange? Miss Arden, I am going to do something genealogical, or historical. I think I will write a book. Writing a book, people say, is a very nice amusement when you don’t know what to do with yourself, and if you happen to be rather wretched now and then. I am going to write something about the family. I wonder if Edgar and you would let me see the old family papers--if any papers exist?”