"Yes, but why shouldn't I go in?" Pauline persisted. "Darling Mother, you go on being angry with me, but you don't tell me why I shouldn't go in."
"Can't you understand what the Wychford people might think?"
Pauline shook her head.
"Well, I shan't say any more about it," Mrs. Grey decided. "But you must promise me never never to do such a foolish thing again."
"I'll promise you never to go to Guy's house," said Pauline. "But I can't promise never to do foolish things, when such perfectly ordinary things are called foolish."
Mrs. Grey looked helplessly round her, but as neither of her two elder daughters was present she had nothing to say; and Pauline, who thought that all the fuss was due to nothing but Monica's unwarranted interference, had nothing to say either; so they walked along the herbaceous borders each with a demeanour of reproach for the other's failure to understand. The snapdragons lolled upon the sun with gold-bloomed anthers, and drank more and still more colour until they were drenched beyond the deepest dyes of crimson, extinguishing the paler hues of rose and chrome which yet at moth-time would show like lamps when the others had dulled in the discouragement of twilight.
"You mustn't think anything more about it," said her mother after a long silence. "I'm sure it was only heedlessness. I don't think you can say I'm too strict with you and Guy. Really, you know, you ought to have had a very happy June. You've been together nearly all the time."
"Darling," said Pauline utterly penitent for the least look that could have wounded her mother's feelings. "You're sweet to us. And Guy loves you nearly as much as I do."
The gong sounded upon the luteous air of the evening; and Pauline with her arm closely tucked into her mother's arm walked with her across the lawn toward the house.
"It's no good looking crossly at me," she said when like a beautiful ghost Monica came into the dining-room. "I've explained everything to Mother."