I repeated steadily: "I am not coming. I have nothing to talk to you about. And, really, I think I have seen quite enough——"
"Of you!" was my unspoken ending to this sentence. These "asides" seem to sprinkle one's conversations with words written, as it were, in invisible ink. How seldom can one publish them abroad, these mental conclusions of one's remarks! No, no; life is quite complicated enough without that.... So I concluded, rather lamely, looking round the gallery with the drawings of Orientalised Europeans: "I have seen quite enough of this exhibition. So I am going——"
"To have tea, of course. That is a very sound scheme of yours, Miss Lovelace," said Mr. Burke briskly but courteously. "You'll let me have the pleasure of taking you somewhere, won't you?"
"Certainly not," I said again. This time the emphasis was on the "certainly." Then, as I was turning to leave the gallery, I looked again at this Mr. Burke. He may be what my far-away brother Reggie would call "a wrong 'un." And I believe that he is. But he is certainly a very presentable-looking wrong 'un—far more presentable than I, Beatrice Lovelace, am—was, I mean. Thank goodness, and my mistress's salary, there is absolutely no fault to be found with my entirely plain black outdoor things. And, proportionately, I have spent more of the money on my boots, gloves, and neckwear than on the other part of my turn-out. There's some tradition in our family of Lady Anastasia's having laid down this law. It is quite "sound," as Mr. Burke called it.
Now this presentable-looking but otherwise very discreditable Mr. Burke was quite capable of following me wherever I went. And if there is one thing I should loathe it is any kind of "fuss" in a public place. So, I thought swiftly, perhaps the best way of avoiding this fuss is to go quietly—but forbiddingly—to have tea. I needn't let him pay for it. So I said coldly to the big young man at my heels in the entrance: "I am going to Blank's."
"Oh, no," said Mr. Burke pleasantly, "we are going to White's. Don't you like White's?"
I had never been there in my life, of course, but I did not tell him so.