"Exactly," Aunt Honoria gave a little laugh. "Because you two young despots have broken the conventions by this secret marriage, I think it follows that you should do something to stop gossip and comment by conforming to an old custom. What do you say, my friend?"
Franklin put a curb upon his eagerness. To get Beatrix to sea on his yacht—that was the thing. It would give him a chance, just a chance, to win his way to Beatrix's untouched and wilful heart, and go far to show York that his intuition and cunning reasoning were wrong.
"If you think so," he said, "I am perfectly willing to fall in with your wishes."
"That's extremely nice of you!"
Franklin showed his excellent teeth and gave a little bow. But not being a lady's man he failed to produce an Elizabethan compliment or one that might have proved that there is gallantry even in these careless days.
Aunt Honoria took the word for the deed, and Franklin's arm down the steps. The sun was dipping into the Sound and the whole panorama of sky was striped and splashed with red. Young voices drifted toward them from the tennis courts and a flock of wild ducks high up in a wide V flew rapidly above their heads. The scent of flowers rose up to them as they walked and a very golden day slipped gently into evening.
"I don't know what Beatrix will have to say about it," said Franklin.
There was a rather dry laugh. "Oh, I had not forgotten that Beatrix, although happily married, is a factor to be consulted."
Franklin laughed too. "No," he said, with several memories very clear in his mind, "one could hardly forget that."
And then the tall, white-haired, dignified woman, about whom there was an intellectual humanity very rarely met with, did an unexpected thing. She stopped suddenly and stood in front of Franklin, eye to eye with him. "My dear Pelham," she said, with a touch of propheticism, "you will not find the woman in Beatrix, nor will she have discovered the woman in herself, until that precious moment when, quite conscious of her abdication of a mock throne, she falls in with your wishes like a simple trusting child. When that moment comes, if ever it does, I shall give praise to God, because the woman in Beatrix will be very sweet and beautiful."