“Then I should like to frighten them,” declared Mrs. Westgate, clasping her jeweled hands.
“To frighten whom?”
“All these people; Lord Lambeth’s family and friends.”
“How should you frighten them?” asked the young girl.
“It wouldn’t be I—it would be you. It would frighten them to think that you should absorb his lordship’s young affections.”
Bessie Alden, with her clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark brows, continued to interrogate. “Why should that frighten them?”
Mrs. Westgate poised her answer with a smile before delivering it. “Because they think you are not good enough. You are a charming girl, beautiful and amiable, intelligent and clever, and as bien-elevee as it is possible to be; but you are not a fit match for Lord Lambeth.”
Bessie Alden was decidedly disgusted. “Where do you get such extraordinary ideas?” she asked. “You have said some such strange things lately. My dear Kitty, where do you collect them?”
Kitty was evidently enamored of her idea. “Yes, it would put them on pins and needles, and it wouldn’t hurt you. Mr. Beaumont is already most uneasy; I could soon see that.”
The young girl meditated a moment. “Do you mean that they spy upon him—that they interfere with him?”