Mrs. Hardy, pocketing her dignity, proceeded to describe Mr. Dalrymple, with great amplitude of detail, as he had appeared from her point of view.
The result was a kind of superior Newgate villian, of good birth and distinguished presence, whom Mrs. Reade regarded with a sinking heart.
"Oh, dear me!" she sighed, blankly, "what a pity! What a grevious pity!"
"I can't see why you should look at it in this way, Beatrice. I tell you she had little or nothing to say to him, and she only danced with him once the whole evening. I took care to point out to her the kind of man he was, and to warn her against him."
"You ought not to have done that."
"My dear, you will allow me to be the best judge of what I ought to do. She was very good and obedient, and she acted in every way as I wished her."
"But she liked him, didn't she?" asked Mrs. Reade.
"Yes," Mrs. Hardy admitted, with evident reluctance, "I am afraid she did like him."
"I am sure she did," said Mrs. Reade, decisively. "And there is more than liking in the matter, unless I am much mistaken. I have never been in love myself," she remarked frankly, "but I fancy I know the symptoms when I see them. I feared from the first that it was something of that sort that was the matter with her. At any rate—" putting up her hand to stay the imminent protest on her mother's lips—"at any rate, if he has not made her love him, he has made her discontented with Mr. Kingston."
"Well, Beatrice," the elder woman exclaimed, with an impatient sigh, rising from her chair, "if such a thing should be—if such a misfortune should have happened after all my care—we must only do the best we can to mend it. Thank goodness he's gone. He is not at all likely to give her another thought. If he does—" Mrs. Hardy shut her mouth significantly, and her Roman nostrils dilated.