“Are you forgetting, sir,” broke she in, haughtily, “that you have really told me next to nothing, and that I am left to gather from mere insinuations that there is something in our condition your delicacy shrinks from explaining?”
“Not a bit of it,” chimed he in, quickly. “The best men in England are on the turf, and a good book on the Oaks is n't within reach of the income-tax. Your father's dealings are with all the swells in the Peerage.”
“So there is a partnership in the business, sir,” said she, with a quiet irony; “and is the Honorable Mr. Beecher one of the company?”
“Well—ha—I suppose—I ought to say yes,” muttered he, in deep confusion. “We do a stroke of work together now and then—on the square, of course, I mean.”
“Pray don't expose the secrets of the firm, sir. I am even more interested than yourself that they should be conducted with discretion. There is only one other question I have to ask; and as it purely concerns myself, you 'll not refuse me a reply. Knowing our station in life, as I now see you know it, by what presumption did you dare to trifle with my girlish ignorance, and lead me to fancy that I might yet move in a sphere which in your heart you knew I was excluded from?”
Overwhelmed with shame and confusion, and stunned by the embarrassment of a dull man in a difficulty, Beecher stood, unable to utter a word.
“To say the least, sir, there was levity in this,” said she, in a tone of sorrowful meaning; “but, perhaps, you never meant it so.”
“Never, upon my oath, never!” cried he, eagerly. “Whatever I said, I uttered in all frankness and sincerity. I know London town just as well as any man living, and I 'll stand five hundred to fifty there's not your equal in it,—and that's giving the whole field against the odds. All I say is, you shall go to the Queen's Drawing-room—”
“I am not likely to do so, sir,” said she, with a haughty gesture, and left the room.