“It was the horridest insult I have ever received!” said Deborah hotly.
“You can’t call a sum like that an insult!” protested her ladyship. “If only you would not be so impulsive! Think of poor dear Kit! He is coming home on leave too, and he says he has fallen in love. Was ever anything so unfortunate? It is all very well to talk of insults, but one must be practical, Deb! Seventy pounds for green peas, and here you are throwing twenty thousand to the winds! And the end of it will be that you will fall into Ormskirk’s hands! I can see it all! The only comfort I have is that I shall very likely die before it happens, because I can feel my spasms coming on already.”
She closed her eyes as she spoke, apparently resigning herself to her approaching end. Miss Grantham said defiantly: “I am not in the least sorry. I will make him sorry he ever dared to think I was the kind of creature who would entrap a silly boy into marrying me!”
This announcement roused Lady Bellingham to open her eyes again, and to say in a bewildered way: “But you told me you said you would marry him!”
“I said so to Ravenscar. That is nothing!”
“But I don’t see how he can help thinking it if you told him So!”
“Yes, and I told him also, that I meant to set up my own faro-bank when I am Lady Mablethorpe,” nodded Miss Grantham, dwelling fondly on these recollections. “And I said I should change everything at Mablethorpe. He looked as though he would have liked to hit me!”
Lady Bellingham regarded her with a fascinated stare. “Deb, you were not—you were not vulgar?”
“Yes, I was. I was as vulgar as I could be, and I shall be more vulgar presently!”
“But why?” almost shrieked her ladyship.