Part 3 (2/2)
”Oh! You lived in Keeton then always, along with Miss Grey!”
”How delightful!” Lucy exclaimed, desisting from her occupation of opening books and turning over music; ”for you can tell us all about Nola and her love story.”
”Her love story?” Mrs. Money repeated, in tones of melancholy inquiry.
”Her love story!” Miss Blanchet murmured tremulously, and wondering who had betrayed Minola's secret.
”Oh, yes,” said Lucy decisively. ”I know there's some love story--something romantic and delightful. Do tell us, Miss Blanchet.”
Even the saint-like Theresa now showed a mild and becoming interest.
”It's not exactly a love story,” Miss Blanchet said with some hesitation, not well knowing what she ought to reveal and what to keep back. ”At least it's no love affair on Minola's part. She never was in love--never. She detests all love-making--at least she thinks so,” the poetess said with a gentle sigh. ”But there was a gentleman who was very much in love with her.”
”Oh, she must have had heaps of lovers!” interposed Lucy.
Miss Blanchet then told the story of Mr. Augustus Sheppard, and how he was rich and handsome--at least rather handsome, she said--and how he wanted to marry Minola; and her people very much wished that she would have him, and she would not; and how at last she hastened her flight to London to get rid of him. All this was full of delightful interest to Lucy, and still further quickened the kindly sympathy of Mrs. Money.
Then Mary Blanchet went into a long story about the death of Minola's mother and the second marriage of Minola's father, and then the father's death and the stepmother's second marriage, and the discomfort of the home which fate had thus provided for Minola. She expatiated upon the happiness of the sheltered life Minola had had while her mother was living, and the change that came upon her afterward, until the only doubt Mrs. Money had ever entertained about Minola--a doubt as to the perfect propriety and judgment of her coming to live almost alone in London--vanished altogether, and she regarded our heroine as a girl who had been driven from her home instead of having fled from it.
Mrs. Money delicately and cautiously approached the subject of Minola's means of subsistence. On this point no one could enlighten her better than Miss Blanchet, who knew to the sixpence the income and expenditure of her friend. Well, Minola was not badly off for a girl, Mrs. Money thought. A girl could live nicely and quietly, like a lady, but very quietly, on that. Besides, some rich man would be sure to fall in love with her.
”But she ought to have a great deal of money,” the poetess eagerly explained, very proud of her leader's losses. ”Her father was a rich man, quite a rich man, and he had quarrelled with her brother, and she ought to have all the money, only for that second marriage.” Indeed, Miss Blanchet added the expression of her own profound conviction that there must have been some queer work--some concealment or something--about Mr. Grey's property, seeing that so little of it came to Minola.
”I'll get Mr. Money to look into all that,” Mrs. Money said decisively.
”He understands all about these things, and nothing could be hidden from him.”
Miss Blanchet modestly intimated that she had confided her suspicions to her brother, and begged him to try and find out something.
”Oh, he never could understand anything about it!” Lucy said. ”Poets never know about these things. It's just in papa's line. He'll find out. They can't baffle him. I know they have been cheating Nola--I know they have! I know there's a will hidden away somewhere, making her the rightful heir or whatever it is.”
”About this gentleman--this lover. Is he a nice person?” Mrs. Money began.
”Mr. Augustus Sheppard?” Mary asked, mentioning his name for the first time in the conversation.
”Augustus Sheppard! Is that his name?” Lucy demanded eagerly.
”Why then, papa knows him! Indeed he does. I do declare papa knows everything!”
”Why do you think, dear, that he knows this gentleman?”
”Because I heard him asking Nola about Mr. Augustus Sheppard the other day, mamma, in our drawing-room.”
”He couldn't have known this, I think,” Miss Blanchet said.
”Oh, no, I suppose not; but he knows him, and he'll tell us all about him. Why wouldn't Nola have him, Miss Blanchet?”
”He is rather a formal sort of person, and heavy, and not the least in the world poetic or romantic; and Minola does not like him at all. She doesn't think his feelings are very deep; but there I am sure she is wrong,” the poetess added emphatically. ”She has never had occasion to make a study of human feelings as others have.”
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