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“But he wasn’t her lover, and it was her fears, not her hopes, that I put an end to.”

“My dear Elma!” Sir Dugald’s eyebrows went up.

“She didn’t love him,” persisted Lady Haigh. “Of course it sounds horrid as you put it, but when you know the circumstances you will say that I couldn’t possibly have let it go on. Penelope and Colin used to know Captain Ferrers when they were children. He lived near them, and their father was very kind to him, and used to get him out of scrapes about once a-week. Ferrers was fond of the children, and they adored him. When he went to India, Penelope can’t have been more than fourteen, but he asked her if she would marry him when he came home. I can’t imagine that he took it seriously, but she did; at any rate, she felt bound by it. A romantic child of that age, with a brother as romantic as herself to keep her up to it—of course she dreamed of him continually. But he scarcely ever wrote to her father, and never to her, and as she grew older she left off thinking about him. Then her father died, and she went to live with her uncle in London while Colin was at Addiscombe. That was when I used to meet her at the College. Why, she never even told me she was engaged! Of course, I didn’t know her very well, but well enough to have heard that. And since we came out her uncle died, and her aunt and cousins didn’t want her. She’s too handsome, you know. And Colin wanted her to come out with him—did I tell you they were twins, and absolutely devoted?—but the aunt said it wasn’t proper, until Colin remembered that old foolishness with Ferrers, and at once—oh, it was the most delightful and suitable and convenient plan that could possibly be devised! They had the grace not to thrust her on Ferrers unprepared, but Colin wrote to him to say he was bringing her out by the Overland, and poor Pen wrote to me—and both letters were lost when the Nuncomar went down! It was only with dreadful misgivings that Penelope had consented to the plan, and she got more and more miserable when they found no letters at Alexandria or Aden or Bombay. When they arrived here this morning, and still there were no letters and no Ferrers, she made Colin come to me, though he wanted to go and hunt up Ferrers, and I brought her up here at once, and settled matters.”