The maid came out, and as she did so, Beatrix made a dart into her room. She had suddenly remembered that she could escape through it into the main part of the house, and that if she could get away and find shelter in the arms of her fluttering companion she would be safe for that night at any rate.
But Franklin was too quick for her. He caught her by the arm just as she was about to win the first round.
"Oh, no, you don't," he said, and picked her up in his arms, carried her back into the bedroom and dumped her down on a divan as though she were a bundle of feathers.
Then he turned to the maid. "Just lock your door and bring me the key." And when in a moment it was timidly handed to him, he added, sharply: "Now get Mrs. Franklin ready for the night."
Beatrix stopped the girl as she padded softly over to the dressing-room. "Wait a minute, Helene," she said, and turned towards Franklin. "This is the hour when I drink a glass of hot milk, oh, my lord and master! Have I your gracious permission to continue the habit to-night? If so, will you permit my handmaiden to go below and get it for me?"
Franklin held out the key. Helene took it, and he turned on his heel.
With an eel-like movement Beatrix slipped from the divan, made a dart at the French girl and in a quick whisper told her to go and fetch Mrs. Lester Keene at once. Whereupon, under the firm belief that this new manoeuvre made her top-dog, all her audacity and self-assurance returned. With Brownie there to protect her she could really begin to enjoy herself and make Franklin wish, not only that he had never entered her room, but that he had never been born. She could play with him as a cat plays with a mouse. She could make him sting and smart under her badinage, She could make him see that he had placed himself in a position in which he would look the most egregious idiot, and eventually rout him from the scene with her laughter ringing in his ears. "It will take a better man than Mr. Pelham Franklin," she told herself, "to break me in."
She began her new tactics at once. She strolled over to where Franklin was standing and sat on the arm of a chair. Her color had come back and her eyes were sparkling. She looked like one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' pictures of Lady Hamilton come to life. "Tell me," she said, "what's your opinion of York? We may as well have a little bright conversation while Helene has gone on her domestic errand, don't you think so?"
Franklin looked at the girl with a sort of analytical examination. He admitted her courage and her spirit. He admitted her overwhelming beauty and her inherited assurance. But he began to wonder whether,—in spite of the little piteous appeal which had come involuntarily from her lips when she found herself alone with him,—there was not a streak of callousness in her nature which put her well up among some of the almost degenerate young women of her class.
"I only know York by sight," he said. "That was enough."