“Oh, yes!”
Mr. Scunthorpe nodded portentously at Bertram. “You know what, dear boy? All the crack, your sister! Not a doubt of it. Knows all the best people. Drives out with the Nonpareil. Good thing she said she was an heiress.”
“Oh, no, no, I wish I had never done so, for it has made everything so uncomfortable!”
“Now, Bella, that’s gammon! I know you! Don’t you try to tell me you don’t like being all the go, because I wouldn’t believe you if you did!” said Bertram, with brotherly candour.
Arabella thought it over. Then she gave a reluctant smile. “Well, yes, perhaps I do like it, but when I remember the cause of it I do indeed wish I had never said such a thing! Only consider what a fix I am in! If the truth were known now I should be utterly discredited. No one would even bow to me, I daresay, and I have the greatest dread that Lady Bridlington would send me home in disgrace! And then Papa would know, and—Bertram, I had almost rather throw myself into the river than have him know such a thing of me!”
“Lord, yes!” he agreed, with a shudder. “But it won’t come to that! If anyone asks me any prying questions, I shall say you are well known to me, and so will Felix!”
“Yes, but that is not all!” Arabella pointed out. “I can never, never accept any offer made to me, and what Mama will think of such selfishness I dare not consider! For she so much hoped that I should form an eligible connection, and Lady Bridlington is bound to tell her that—that quite a number of very eligible gentlemen have paid me the most marked attentions!”
Bertram knit his brows over this. “Unless—No, you’re right, Bella; devilish awkward fix! You would have to tell the truth, if you accepted an offer, and ten to one he’d cry off. What a tiresome girl you are, to be sure! Dashed if I see what’s to be done! Do you, Felix?”
“Very difficult situation,” responded Mr. Scunthorpe, shaking his head. “Only one thing to be done.”
“What’s that?”