"Oh, Mr. Franklyn!" The young lady brought her hands together with a little clap. She turned in natural triumph towards her friend. "What did I tell you? Now aren't you sorry for what you said last night? Didn't I say that you hadn't the faintest notion of what you were talking about?"
Miss Wentworth, though, as was to be expected, not so excited as the lady who was principally concerned, evinced sufficiently lively signs of interest.
"You certainly did, and I certainly hadn't; and while you left nothing unsaid which you ought to have said, there can be no sort of doubt whatever that I said everything which I ought to have left unsaid. But, at the same time, I do beg leave to remark that Mr. Paxton need not have worn such an air of mystery."
"Why?" Miss Strong tapped the toe of her slipper against the floor. "He wasn't compelled to blurt out his affairs to all the world."
"Certainly not--if I am all the world. Are you also all the world? From what I gathered he did not make much of a confidante of you."
"Well, he wasn't forced to!" Suddenly Miss Strong made a wholly irrational, but not wholly unnatural, movement in the direction of Miss Wentworth's chair. She placed her hand upon that lady's shoulders. And she kissed her twice, first on the lips, then on the brow. And she exclaimed, "Never mind. I forgive you!"
Miss Wentworth was quite as demure as the occasion required. She surveyed her emotional friend with twinkling eyes.
Miss Strong moved restlessly about the room, passing, as it seemed, aimlessly from object to object.
"It is strange that he should have kept such news to himself! And not have said a word about it! And now not coming after all!" She turned to Mr. Franklyn. "I suppose that it is all quite true? That you have not been building up my hopes simply to dash them down again?"
"I have given you an accurate statement of the actual position of affairs when prices were made up for the day, as you may easily prove yourself by a reference to an evening paper."
With her hands Miss Strong pushed back her hair from her temples.
"I am afraid he did, heavily. And then, in spite of that, on the same day, to see his way to a quarter of a million!"
"A quarter of a million! Did he mention that precise amount?"