“Good heavens!” gasped Beatrice. She lay back in her chair, and stared with horrified eyes into space. “Good—good heavens!”
Mrs. O' Donovan Florence leaned forward and took her hand.
“What is it, my dear? What's come to you?” she asked, in alarm.
Beatrice gave a kind of groan.
“It's absurd—it's impossible,” she said; “and yet, if by any ridiculous chance you should be right, it's too horribly horrible.” She repeated her groan. “If by any ridiculous chance you are right, the man will think that I have been leading him on!”
“LEADING HIM ON!” Mrs. O'Donovan Florence suppressed a shriek of ecstatic mirth. “There's no question about my being right,” she averred soberly. “He wears his heart behind his eyeglass; and whoso runs may read it.”
“Well, then—” began Beatrice, with an air of desperation... “But no,” she broke off. “YOU CAN'T be right. It's impossible, impossible. Wait. I'll tell you the whole story. You shall see for yourself.”
“Go on,” said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, assuming an attitude of devout attention, which she retained while Beatrice (not without certain starts and hesitations) recounted the fond tale of Peter's novel, and of the woman who had suggested the character of Pauline.
“But OF COURSE!” cried the Irishwoman, when the tale was finished; and this time her shriek of mirth, of glee, was not suppressed. “Of course—you miracle of unsuspecting innocence! The man would never have breathed a whisper of the affair to any soul alive, save to his heroine herself—let alone to you, if you and she were not the same. Couple that with the eyes he makes at you, and you've got assurance twice assured. You ought to have guessed it from the first syllable he uttered. And when he went on about her exalted station and her fabulous wealth! Oh, my ingenue! Oh, my guileless lambkin! And you Trixie Belfont! Where's your famous wit? Where are your famous intuitions?”
“BUT DON'T YOU SEE,” wailed Beatrice, “don't you see the utterly odious position this leaves me in? I've been urging him with all my might to tell her! I said... oh, the things I said!” She shuddered visibly. “I said that differences of rank and fortune could n't matter.” She gave a melancholy laugh. “I said that very likely she'd accept him. I said she couldn't help being... Oh, my dear, my dear! He'll think—of course, he can't help thinking—that I was encouraging him—that I was coming halfway to meet him.”