"Wonderfully pretty," repeats Bebe, with emphasis. "My dearest Phyllis, you should always wear blue cashmere, and let your hair fall down your back just so. You look exactly fourteen, and very charming."
"Well, even at the best of times I was never considered pretty," declared I, modestly. "Now and then, when wearing a new dress or that, I may have appeared good-looking; but even Marmaduke never told me I was that."
"Never told you you were pretty!" cries Bebe, in a voice of horror. "Never told you you were the sweetest and loveliest creature upon earth? What a miserable lover!" It would be impossible to describe the amount of scorn she throws into her manner.
Her words, though I know they are spoken in jest, coming thus hotly on my new suspicions, rankle sorely.
"I don't see that his telling me a lie would have done any good," I expostulate, somewhat warmly, feeling passionately aggrieved at the thought that he has fallen short in his wooing. Surely once, if for ever so little a time, I was all in all to him.
"Yes, it would—an immensity of good. It would be only fit and proper. That is just one of the things about which a man ought to be able to lie well; though, indeed, in most cases I doubt if it would be a lie. Change a friend into a lover, awaken within him the desire to make you his wife, and, such is the vanity and self-complacency of man, he will at once (in regarding you as his possible property) magnify your charms, and end by contrasting you favorably with every other wife of his acquaintance. You do not come within the pale of my remarks, however, as I speak of ugly women. Phyllis, you are too modest. You give me the impression that all your life through you have been more or less sat upon. Is it not so?"
"I believe it is," I answer, laughing; "but I think justly so. Why, only look at my nose; it turns right up; and—and then, you know, Dora was always on the spot to eclipse me."
"Indeed I know nothing of the kind. You are infinitely more attractive in my eyes; though I admit Dora has charms, with her complexion and eyes of 'holy blue.' I verily believe you are a hypocrite. Don't you know all the men here rave about you? Don't you know it was a fixed creed in the family that Marmaduke's heart was cased in steel until he destroyed it by marrying you?"
"Oh," I say, with a light laugh, though my blood is coursing wildly though my veins, "you exaggerate slightly there, I think. Was he not very much epris with his cousin, Lady Blanche Going, some years ago?"
"A mere boy-and-girl attachment. I would as soon dream of lending importance to the passion of a schoolboy in his teens—to the passion of my dear Chips, for instance. Besides, she was several years older than he was—whatever she may be now," says Bebe, with a little grimace.