“And his name?” I said, as quietly and indifferently as I could.
“Sir Percival Glyde.”
Sir —Sir Percival! Anne Catherick’s question—that suspicious question about the men of the rank of Baronet whom I might happen to know—had hardly been dismissed from my mind by Miss Halcombe’s return to me in the summerhouse, before it was recalled again by her own answer. I stopped suddenly, and looked at her.
“Sir Percival Glyde,” she repeated, imagining that I had not heard her former reply.
“Knight, or Baronet?” I asked, with an agitation that I could hide no longer.
She paused for a moment, and then answered, rather coldly—
“Baronet, of course.”
XI
Not a word more was said, on either side, as we walked back to the house. Miss Halcombe hastened immediately to her sister’s room, and I withdrew to my studio to set in order all of Mr. Fairlie’s drawings that I had not yet mounted and restored before I resigned them to the care of other hands. Thoughts that I had hitherto restrained, thoughts that made my position harder than ever to endure, crowded on me now that I was alone.
She was engaged to be married, and her future husband was Sir Percival Glyde. A man of the rank of Baronet, and the owner of property in Hampshire.
There were hundreds of baronets in England, and dozens of landowners in Hampshire. Judging by the ordinary rules of evidence, I had not the