“Why do you say ‘at this point’?” Bessie asked. “Have I ceased to be modest?”
“You care for him too much. A month ago, when you said you didn’t, I believe it was quite true. But at present, my dear child,” said Mrs. Westgate, “you wouldn’t find it quite so simple a matter never to see Lord Lambeth again. I’ve watched it come on.”
“You’re mistaken,” Bessie declared. “You don’t understand.”
“Ah, you poor proud thing, don’t be perverse!” her companion returned.
The girl gave the matter, thus admonished, some visible thought. “I know him better certainly, if you mean that. And I like him very much. But I don’t like him enough to make trouble for him with his family. However, I don’t believe in that.”
“I like the way you say ‘however’!” Mrs. Westgate commented. “Do you pretend you wouldn’t be glad to marry him?”
Again Bessie calmly considered. “It would take a great deal more than is at all imaginable to make me marry him.”
Her relative showed an impatience. “And what’s the great difficulty?”
“The great difficulty is that I shouldn’t care to,” said Bessie Alden.
The morning after Lord Lambeth had had with his own frankest critic that exchange of ideas which has just been narrated, the ladies at Jones’s Hotel received from him a written invitation to pay their projected visit to Branches Castle on the following Tuesday. “I think I’ve made up a very pleasant party,” his lordship went on. “Several people whom you know, and my mother and sisters, who have been accidentally prevented from making your acquaintance sooner.” Bessie at this lost no time in calling her sister’s attention to the injustice she had done the Duchess of Bayswater, whose hostility was now proved to be a vain illusion.