“Just this,” the Countess answered in bold English and her eyes were lively, her figure elastic: “We must all of us go down to the old shop and shake his hand there—every man Jack of us!—I’m only quoting the sailors, Harriet—and that’s the way to win him.”
She snapped her fingers, laughing. Harriet stared at her, and so did Andrew, though for a different reason. She seemed to be transformed. Seeing him inclined to gape, she ran up to him, caught up his chin between her ten fingers, and kissed him on both cheeks, saying:
“You needn’t come, if you’re too proud, you know, little man!”
And to Harriet’s look of disgust, the cause for which she divined with her native rapidity, she said: “What does it matter? They will talk, but they can’t look down on us now. Why, this is my doing!”
She came tripping to her tall sister, to ask plaintively “Mayn’t I be glad?” and bobbed a curtsey.
Harriet desired Andrew to leave them. Flushed and indignant she then faced the Countess.
“So unnecessary!” she began. “What can excuse your indiscretion, Louisa?”
The Countess smiled to hear her talking to her younger sister once more. She shrugged.
“Oh, if you will keep up the fiction, do. Andrew knows—he isn’t an idiot—and to him we can make light of it now. What does anybody’s birth matter, who’s well off!”
It was impossible for Harriet to take that view. The shop, if not the thing, might still have been concealed from her husband, she thought.