Miss Bennett looked up at him with her starlike eyes shining with emotion.
"But someone must teach her that she can't behave like that. I can't do it. I can only teach by being kind—endlessly kind—and she can't learn from that. So the best thing for both of us is for me to leave her and let someone else try."
Bobby sat down and took her thin aristocratic hand in both of his.
"No one can teach her, dear Benny," he said. "But life can—and will. That's my particular nightmare—that people like Lydia get broken by life—and it's always such a smash. That's why I'm content to stand by without, as most of my friends think, due regard for my own self-respect. That's why I do hope you'll contrive to. That's why she seems to me the most pathetic person I know. She almost makes me cry."
"Pathetic!" said Miss Bennett with something approaching a snort.
"Yes, like a child playing with a dynamite fuse. Even to-night she seemed to me pathetic. She can't afford to alienate the few people who really care for her—you and Eleanor and—well, of course, she won't alienate me, whatever she does."
"But she takes advantage of our affection," said Miss Bennett.
Bobby stood up.
"You bet she does!" he said. "She'll have something bitter waiting for me now when I go down, something she'll have forgotten by to-morrow and I'll remember as long as I live."
He smiled perfectly gayly and left the room. He found Lydia strolling about the drawing-room, softly whistling to herself.