"Oh, Mummy, what on earth does it matter? Besides, they always were!"
"Nonsense, I don't count Dan as a regular guest! I suppose I shall have to tell that Birtley girl she can dine with us."
She then remembered that the library, where Beulah usually partook of meals served to her on a tray, was swept, garnished, and furnished with card-tables; reflected that the servants would infallibly be affronted by any suggestion that they should serve two separate meals that evening, and became more cheerful. Beulah received a curt intimation that she was expected to dine with her employer with outward apathy. Her spirits were not raised by the contemplation of her image in the mirror set within the panel of her wardrobe door. The discreet dinner-dress, bought for just such an occasion as the present one, had, for its provenance, the Inexpensive Department of a London store distinguished more for its reasonable prices than for its exclusiveness of design, and had been worn rather too often. Not even the addition of a pendant of antique and charming design, bequeathed to her by her Italian mother, could redeem it, she considered. A dab of Indian ink had concealed a cut on one of her satin sandals; but her thick brown locks, springing attractively from a broad, low brow, would have been the better for re-setting. "Oh, blast, who cares, anyway?" demanded Beulah of her scowling reflection, and dragged a comb through her hair once more.
She was guilty of the extravagance of hiring a taxi to convey her from Nevern Place to Charles Street, and alighted from it just as Mr. Seaton-Carew was about to press the bell beside the front door of the house. He waited for her to join him, saying, in the half-caressing, half-bantering tone he was apt to adopt when addressing pretty young women: "Well, and how is my little protegee?"
"Thank you, I am perfectly well, and you would oblige me if you would stop calling me your little protegee!" Beulah replied.
He laughed gently, and gave her arm a squeeze above the elbow. "What a farouche child it is!" he remarked. "Ungrateful, aren't you? Eh? Who got you this job, I should like to know? And what thanks has he ever had for doing it? Now, you tell me that, you impossible young termagant!"
"If you had got it for me without telling Mrs. Haddington every detail of my past career, I might have been grateful - even to the extent of letting you paw me about!" retorted Beulah fiercely, detaching his hand from her arm.
Again he laughed, and this time playfully pinched her chin. "Does Lilias put it across you? What a shame! But I really couldn't foist you on to her without letting her know the worst, could I?"
Beulah sought angrily in her purse for her latch-key, realised that she had left it in her shopping-bag, set her finger on the bell, and pressed it viciously. "I told you the truth, and you pretended to believe me!"
"Of course I did! That's one of the rules of the game, my silly sweet."