“Yes, between us we must be able to do so. I own, I do not immediately perceive how it is to be contrived, but I mean to think very particularly about it. It will be best if Lady Dolphinton believes him to be obedient, I think. She is the most absurd creature! I daresay you are aware that she has compelled him still to angle for me! Should we not turn this to account? Recollect, if she knows him to be in my company she will be satisfied! Something may suggest itself: it must do so! If you do not object, I will encourage him to be a great deal in my company; and—though it will go sorely against the grain with me!—I’ll let her think I am not wholly averse from his suit.”
“I’m agreeable,” said Miss Plymstock. “But maybe this cousin Freddy of Foster’s won’t like it?”
“Freddy? It has nothing—I mean,” Kitty corrected herself hastily, “he will have not the least objection, I assure you!”
Chapter XI
In pursuance of her aims, Miss Charing allowed herself, with real heroism, to be inveigled by Lady Dolphinton into visiting the Dolphinton house in Grosvenor Place, a locality which her ladyship described disparagingly as quite out of the way, and this in so scornful a voice that Kitty quaked to think of what she might have said of so unmodish a quarter as Keppel Street.
There had been a time when Lady Dolphinton had not spared to state her opinion of encroaching orphans, or her conviction that this particular orphan was a sly little hussy. It seemed that that was now to be forgotten. She was all amiability when Kitty presented herself in Grosvenor Place; and, since she could be agreeable enough when she chose, soon had the girl at her ease. She had the tact not to let Dolphinton appear, and the wit not to mention Mr. Westruther; and if she tacitly assumed that Kitty had accepted Mr. Standen’s offer as a means of establishing herself creditably, she did so with enough sympathy to make it hard for Kitty to be offended. The folly of the world in venerating the higher ranks of nobility was lightly touched upon; and also the advantages attached to a pretty young woman’s allying herself with a complaisant man. “But that I should not say to you, my dear! Freddy—dear creature!—is a Standen! You will discover soon enough how straitlaced a family!”
Kitty could barely repress a smile, but by the time she had driven out with Dolphinton five times, and had twice accompanied him and his mother to the theatre, Mr. Standen surprised her by delivering himself of a protest. He said that she was making a cake of herself.
Kitty refuted the accusation with some heat. Mr. Standen temporized. “Dashed well making a cake of me!” he said.
“Absurd!”
“Well, it ain’t absurd. Here’s half the town knowing you’re engaged to me, and wondering if you’re going to tip me the double. Mind, I wouldn’t say a word if it weren’t Dolph! Coming it a bit too strong, Kit, to prefer a fellow like that to me!”