ver, "Oh, please smoke; I love the smell of a pipe"?

"Would you sit down? Exactly there, please." She placed him at a large
table, opposite an inkpot and a pad of blotting-paper.

"Will you tell your 'tremendous news' to me? My brother and my husband
are giving the boys their dinner."

"Ah!" said Stephen, who had had neither time nor money for breakfast in
London.

"I told them not to wait for me."

So he came to the point at once. He trusted this handsome woman. His
strength and his youth called to hers, expecting no prudish response.
"It's very odd. It is that I'm Rickie's brother. I've just found out.
I've come to tell you all."

"Yes?"

He felt in his pocket for the papers. "Half-brother I ought to have
said."

"Yes?"

"I'm illegitimate. Legally speaking, that is, I've been turned out of
Cadover. I haven't a penny. I--"

"There is no occasion to inflict the details." Her face, which had been
an even brown, began to flush slowly in the centre of the cheeks. The
colour spread till all that he saw of her was suffused, and she turned
away. He thought he had shocked her, and so did she. Neither knew that
the body can be insincere and express not the emotions we feel but those
that we should like to feel. In reality she was quite calm, and her
dislike of him had nothing emotional in it as yet.

"You see--" he began. He was determined to tell the fidgety story, for
the sooner it was over the sooner they would have something to eat.
Delicacy he lacked, and his sympathies were limited. But such as they
were, they rang true: he put no decorous phantom between him and his
desires.

"I do see. I have seen for two years." She sat down at the head of the
table, where there was another ink-pot. Into this she dipped a pen. "I
have seen everything, Mr. Wonham--who you are, how you have behaved at
Cadover, how you must have treated Mrs. Failing yesterday; and now"--her
voice became very grave--"I see why you have come here, penniless.
Before you speak, we know what you will say."

His mouth fell open, and he laughed so merrily that it might have given
her a warning. But she was thinking how to follow up her first success.
"And I thought I was bringing tremendous news!" he cried. "I only
twisted it out of Mrs. Failing last night. And Rickie knows too?"

"We have known for two years."

"But come, by the bye,--if you've known for two years, how is it you
didn't--" The laugh died out of his eyes. "You aren't ashamed?