“I am sorry I had to mention the thing,” returned lady Ann, “but I was afraid your sweet romantic nature might cherish an interest where was nothing on which to ground it. Of course I know whence the report you allude to comes! _Any_ man, bookbinder or blacksmith, may put in a claim. He will find plenty to back him. They will very likely get up a bubble-company, for speculation on his chance! His own class will be sure to take his part! Now that those that ought to know better have taught them to combine, the lower orders stick at nothing to annoy their superiors! But, thank heaven, the estate is _not_ entailed!” “If you imagine Mr. Tuke told me he was heir to Mortgrange, lady Ann, you are mistaken. He does not know himself that he is even supposed to be.” “Are you sure of that? Who then told you? Is it likely his friends have got him into the house, under the eye of his pretended father, and he himself know nothing of the manoeuvre?” “How do you know it was he I meant, lady Ann?” “You told me so yourself.” “No; that I did not! I _know_ I didn't, lady Ann! What made you fix on him?” Lady Ann saw she had committed herself. “If you did not tell me,” she rejoined, “your peculiar behaviour to the man must have led me to the conclusion!” “I have never concealed my interest in Mr. Tuke, but--” “You certainly have not!” interrupted her ladyship, who both suffered in temper and lost in prudence from annoyance at her own blunder. “Pray, hear me out, lady Ann. What I want to say is, that my friendship for Mr. Tuke had begun long before I learned the fact concerning which I thought I ought to warn you.” “Friendship!--ah, well!--scarcely decorous!--but as to what you call _fact_, I would counsel a little caution. I repeat that, if the man be the son of that woman, which may be difficult to prove, it is of no consequence to any one; sir Wilton was never married to his mother--_properly_ married, I mean. I am sorry he should have been born out of wedlock--it is anything but proper; at the same time I cannot be sorry that he will never come between my Arthur and the succession.” Here lady Ann saw a sudden radiance light up the face of Barbara, and change its expression, from that of a lady rightfully angry and a little scornful, to that of a child-angel. Entirely concerned hitherto with Richard's loss and pain, if what lady Ann said should be true, it now first occurred to her what she herself would gain if indeed he was not the heir: no one could think she had been his friend because he was going to be a rich man! If he was the wronged man her ladyship represented him--and her ladyship ought to know--she might behave to him as she pleased without suspicion of low motive! Little she knew what motives such persons as lady Ann were capable of attributing--as little how incapable they were of understanding any generous motive!