“Pleased? How can he be pleased at your holding clandestine meetings with a strange man?”
“To be sure, he did say that that was very wrong of me. But he asked me your name. Of course I don’t know it, but your cousin told me his name was Wyndham, so I said yours was too.”
“But it isn’t!”
“Well, how was I to know that?” demanded Lydia, aggrieved. “I had to say something!”
“You are the most unprincipled girl in the world! Besides, why should he be pleased just because you said my name was Wyndham?”
“Apparently,” said Lydia gloomily, “the Wyndhams are all fabulously wealthy.”
“You must tell him without any loss of time I am not a Wyndham, and that I haven’t any money at all!”
“How can I tell him anything of the kind? I think you are being most unreasonable! Do but consider! If I said now that I had been mistaken in your name he would suppose you to have been trifling with me!”
“But you cannot expect me to pretend to be in love with you!” Pen said, aghast.
Lydia sniffed. “Nothing could be more repulsive to me than such a notion. I am already sorry that I mentioned you to Papa. Only I did, and now I don’t know what to do. He would be so angry if he knew that I had made it all up!”