"She has a hundred thousand charming ways," says she, smiling, but very unpleasantly. "An heiress is always charming."
"Oh no! I didn't look at it in that way at all," says the boy, reddening furiously. "One wouldn't, you know—when looking at her."
"Wouldn't one?" says Mrs. Bethune. She is smiling at him always; but it is a fixed smile now, and even more bitter. "And yet one might," says she.
She speaks almost without knowing it. She is thinking of
Rylton—might he?
"I think not," says the boy, stammering.
It is his first lesson in the book that tells one that to praise a woman to a woman is to bring one to confusion. It is the worst manners possible.
"I agree with you, Woodleigh," says Gower, who is case-hardened and doesn't care about his manners, and who rather dislikes Mrs. Bethune. "She's got lovely little ways. Have you noticed them?"
He looks direct at Marian.
"No," says she, shaking her head, but very sweetly. "But, then, I'm so dull."
"Well, she has," says Gower, in quite a universally conversational tone, looking round him. He turns himself on his rug, pulls a cushion towards him, and lies down again. "And they're all her own, too."