“Everything? Ah, I’ll warrant she wants to know. Depend upon it she’s dying to marry you just as much, and just by the same law, as all the rest of them.”
It appeared to give the young man, for a moment, something rather special to think of. “I shouldn’t like her to refuse me—I shouldn’t like that.”
“If the thing would be so disagreeable then, both to you and to her, in heaven’s name leave it alone.” Such was the moral drawn by Mr. Beaumont; which left him practically the last word in the discussion.
Mrs. Westgate, on her side, had plenty to say to her sister about the rarity of the latter’s visits and the non-appearance at their own door of the Duchess of Bayswater. She confessed, however, to taking more pleasure in this hush of symptoms than she could have taken in the most lavish attentions on the part of that great lady. “It’s unmistakable,” she said, “delightfully unmistakable; a most interesting sign that we’ve made them wretched. The day we dined with him I was really sorry for the poor boy.” It will have been gathered that the entertainment offered by Lord Lambeth to his American friends had been graced by the presence of no near relation. He had invited several choice spirits to meet them, but the ladies of his immediate family were to Mrs. Westgate’s sense—a sense perhaps morbidly acute—conspicuous by their hostile absence.
“I don’t want to work you up any further,” Bessie at last ventured to remark, “but I don’t know why you should have so many theories about Lord Lambeth’s poor mother. You know a great many young men in New York without knowing their mothers.”
Mrs. Westgate rested deep eyes on her sister and then turned away. “My dear Bessie, you’re superb!”
“One thing’s certain”—the girl continued not to blench at her irony. “If I believed I were a cause of annoyance, however unwitting, to Lord Lambeth’s family I should insist—”
“Insist on my leaving England?” Mrs. Westgate broke in.
“No, not that. I want to go to the National Gallery again; I want to see Stratford-on-Avon and Canterbury Cathedral. But I should insist on his ceasing relations with us.”
“That would be very modest and very pretty of you—but you wouldn’t do it at this point.”