Lady Forster, who is impetuous to a fault, makes a movement as if to say something crushing—then restrains herself. After all, it is her brother’s house; this girl is her guest.
‘Oh, not selfish,’ says she sweetly. ‘I have a strange fancy that George adores her.’
‘Strange fancies are not always true,’ says Miss Prior. ‘Sir William, do you agree with Katherine about this adoration?’
Sir William shrugs his shoulders. How should he know?
‘Oh, Billee’s a fool,’ says Lady Forster, in her plaintive voice. ‘Aren’t you, Billee?’
‘My darling, you forget I married you,’ says Forster, in his tragic tone. Whereat she rolls her handkerchief into a little ball and throws it at him.
Mrs. Prior, who has sat on a lounge near the door listening silently to this conversation, now makes up her mind. There is nothing to be hoped for from Crosby. To-morrow, then, she will see this ‘tenant’ of Paul’s, though all the guardians and chaperons in Europe rise up to prevent her.
‘But are you really so sure that your brother is in love with Miss Susan?’ asks Lennox of Lady Forster, in a low tone, unheard by the others.
‘No, I’m not,’ declares she, with astounding frankness. ‘I only wanted to be a tiny bit nasty to Josephine, who, I’m sure, has her eye on him in case another complication fails. No, indeed’—sighing—‘no such luck! Wanderers like George are like confirmed gamblers, or drunkards, or that sort of extraordinary person—they are beyond cure. I’m sure that, in spite of all that pretty Susan’s charms, he will go back to his nasty blacks and his lions and his general tomfoolery.’