"My poor Leoline! And O Hubert, if you only knew what she is to you!"
"I do know! She told me she was my sister!"
Sir Norman looked at him in amazement.
"She told you, and you take it like this?"
"Certainly, I take it like this. How would you have me take it? It is
nothing to go into hysterics about, after all!"
"Of all the cold-blooded young reptiles I ever saw," exclaimed Sir
Norman, with infinite disgust, "you are the worst! If you were told you
were to receive the crown of France to-morrow, you would probably open
your eyes a trifle, and take it as you would a new cap!"
"Of course I would. I haven't lived in courts half my life to get up a
scene for a small matter! Besides, I had an idea from the first moment I
saw Leoline that she must be my sister, or something of that sort."
"And so you felt no emotion whatever on hearing it?"
"I don't know as I properly understand what you mean by emotion," said
Herbert, reflectively. "But ye-e-s, I did feel somewhat pleased--she is
so like me, and so uncommonly handsome!"
"Humph! there's a reason! Did she tell you how she discovered it
herself?"
"Let me see--no--I think not--she simply mentioned the fact."
"She did not tell you either, I suppose, that you had more sisters than
herself?"
"More than herself! No. That would be a little too much of a good thing!
One sister is quite enough for any reasonable mortal."
"But there were two more, my good young friend!"
"Is it possible?" said Hubert, in a tone that betrayed not the slightest
symptom of emotion. "Who are they?"
Sir Norman paused one instant, combating a strong temptation to seize
the phlegmatic page by the collar, and give him such another shaking as
he would not get over for a week to come; but suddenly recollecting he
was Leoline's brother, and by the same token a marquis or thereabouts,
he merely paused to cast a withering look upon him, and walked on.
"Well," said Hubert, "I am waiting to be told."
"You may wait, then!" said Sir Norman, with a smothered growl; "and I
give you joy when I tell you. Such extra communicativeness to one so
stolid could do no good!"
"But I am not stolid! I am in a perfect agony of anxiety," said Hubert.
"You young jackanapes!" said Sir Norman, half-laughing, half-incensed.
"It were a wise deed and a godly one to take you by the hind-leg and
nape of the neck, and pitch you over yonder wall; but for your mister's
sake I will desist."
"Which of them?" inquired Hubert, with provoking gravity.
"It would be more to the point if you asked me who the others were, I
think."