This admirable, if inelegantly phrased, piece of reasoning almost led Mrs. Dean to hope that her daughter was acquiring a modicum of sense. She said briskly: "No, pet, it would never do for you to jilt Stephen; but I am sure he will understand if I explain to him that as things are now I cannot allow my baby to be engaged to him. After all, he is a gentleman!"
"You mean," said Valerie, slowly assimilating the gist of this, "that I can put the blame on to you?"
"There's no question of blame, my pet," said Mrs. Dean, abandoning hope of dawning intelligence in her first-born. "Merely Mother doesn't feel it right for you to be engaged to a man under a cloud."
"Oh, Mummy, how too Victorian! I don't mind about that part of it! The point is I don't really like Stephen, and I know he'd be a hellish husband."
"Now, you know Mother doesn't like to hear that sort of talk!" said Mrs. Dean repressively. "Just give Mother your ring, and leave it to her to do what's best!"
Valerie drew the ring somewhat regretfully from her finger, remarking with a sigh that she supposed she would have to return it to Stephen. "I rather loathe giving it back," she said. "If he says he'd like me to keep it, can I, Mummy?"
"One of these days I hope my little girl will have many rings, just as fine as this one," said Mrs. Dean, firmly removing the ring from Valerie's grasp.
Upon this elevated note the conversation came to an end. Valerie returned to the all-absorbing task of reddening her lips, and Mrs. Dean sallied forth in search of Stephen.
She was prepared to expend both tact and eloquence upon her delicate mission, but she found that neither was required. Stephen, looking almost benign, met her more than half-way. He wholeheartedly agreed that under the existing circumstances he had no right to expect a sensitive child to go on being engaged to him, cheerfully pocketed the ring, and acquiesced with maddening readiness in Mrs. Dean's hope that he and Valerie might remain good friends. In fact, he went further, announcing with a bland smile that he would be a brother to Valerie, a remark which convinced Mrs. Dean that, fortune or no fortune, he would have made a deplorable son-in-law.
She was not the woman to give way to indignation when it would clearly serve her interests better to control her spleen, and as she was obliged to remain at Lexham until the police saw fit to give Valerie permission to go, she came down to tea with her invincible smile on her lips, and only a steely light in her eyes to betray her inner feelings.