"No. No, thanks." She shakes her pretty, fair head at Gower in a delightfully coquettish fashion. Dear boy! How sweet is it of him to come and fetch her for a little stroll among the hollyhocks. "I can't go out now. Not to-night, Randal!"
"Oh! er—so sorry! But——" He looks at Tita. It is impossible not to understand that the Lady Rylton he had intended to take for a little stroll in the calm, delightful evening, had been the younger Lady Rylton. "Well, if your—er—mother—won't come, won't you?" asks he, now addressing Tita distinctly.
"I am not going out either," says she, smiling gently at him. To go now will be to betray fear, and she—no, she will not give in, any way, she will never show the white feather. She will finish this hour with Lady Rylton, whatever it may cost her.
"Really?" asks Gower. He looks as if he would have persuaded her to come with him, but something in her manner convinces him of the folly of persistence.
"Yes, really," returns she, after which he goes down the steps again. They can hear him going, slowly this time, as if reluctantly, and step by step. There doesn't seem to be a run left in him.
"How absurd it is, this confusion of titles!" says Lady Rylton, as the last unsatisfactory step is lost to them in the distance. "Lady Rylton here and Lady Rylton there. Absurd, I call it." She makes a pretence at laughter, but it is a sorry one—her laugh is only angry.
"I suppose it can't be helped," says Tita indifferently. Her eyes are still downcast, her young mouth a little scornful.
"But if you are to be Lady Rylton as well as I, how are we to distinguish? What am I to be?"
"The dowager, I suppose," says Tita, with a little flash of malice. She has been rubbed the wrong way a trifle too much for one afternoon.
"The dowager!" Lady Rylton springs to her feet. "I—do you think that I shall follow you out of a room?"