“I consider public waltzing,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the most innocent, because the most guarded and regulated, pleasure of our time.”
“It’s a jolly compliment to our time!” Mr. Woodley cried with a laugh of the most candid significance.
“I don’t see why I should regard what’s done here,” Bessie pursued. “Why should I suffer the restrictions of a society of which I enjoy none of the privileges?”
“That’s very good—very good,” her friend applauded.
“Oh, go to the Tower and feel the axe if you like!” said Mrs. Westgate. “I consent to your going with Mr. Woodley; but I wouldn’t let you go with an Englishman.”
“Miss Bessie wouldn’t care to go with an Englishman!” Mr. Woodley declared with an asperity doubtless not unnatural in a young man who, dressing in a manner that I have indicated and knowing a great deal, as I have said, about London, saw no reason for drawing these sharp distinctions. He agreed upon a day with Miss Bessie—a day of that same week; while an ingenious mind might perhaps have traced a connexion between the girl’s reference to her lack of social privilege or festal initiation and a question she asked on the morrow as she sat with her sister at luncheon.
“Don’t you mean to write to—to any one?”
“I wrote this morning to Captain Littledale,” Mrs. Westgate replied.
“But Mr. Woodley believes Captain Littledale away in India.”
“He said he thought he had heard so; he knows nothing about it.”