"Really? That's very interesting. Is it your niece? She seems a very nice girl."
"Oh, no. Patricia and he get on very well together, but there's never likely to be anything of that sort between them. Patricia is going in for music; she has a very pretty little voice—you must hear her sing—and though she needn't do anything, you never know with a girl, in these days. No, it isn't Patricia, dear. I wonder you haven't seen something yourself; you must look much nearer home."
"One of my girls?" she laughed, naturally. "Which one?" she asked.
"Why, Pamela, of course. Judith is hardly grown up yet."
"And Alice and Isabelle are too ugly, besides being still less grown up. Well, he does like coming over to us, and we're always very pleased to see him. But really, I don't think it has got as far as that yet. If it had I shouldn't have asked which of the girls you suspected. He seems to like them both equally—all four equally, I might almost say. If it were Pamela, should you think she was quite good enough for him?"
The artistic conscience approved of this question, as carrying over the earlier tone of the conversation into the later. But Lady Crowborough had quite done with that earlier tone. "Oh, my dear!" she said in expostulation. "We're not worldly. You ought to know us better than that by this time. Besides, Pamela might marry anybody. You're not worldly either, I'm sure; but you would expect her to make what is called a good match, I should think. Besides—your daughter!"
Mrs. Eldridge forgave her everything. "It would be rather nice," she said. "I shall hate to lose Pam. It seems such a little time ago that she was a tiny child. I suppose she's a little more to me than the others, because she was the first girl. Still, I've got to lose her some time or other, and I should love it if she didn't go very far away. At the same time, you know, I don't think it's going to happen."
Lady Crowborough looked disappointed. She had always shown herself very much taken with Pamela, since her babyhood, and Mrs. Eldridge had known, all the time she was amusing herself with her attempted stand-offishness towards herself, that she had only to mention Pamela's name to turn it into entire friendliness. "I should like it," she said. "And I suppose neither you nor Colonel Eldridge would object, would you?"
"No, of course we shouldn't. One has to think of the sort of marriage one's daughters are likely to make, and we couldn't expect a more satisfactory one, for any of our girls."