“Are you playing the game with Lord Wilverley?”
“I beg your pardon, Tiddy?”
“Never do that. It’s a device to gain time. You heard me. Are you playing the game? If not—as Mrs. Roden would say—why not?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then I’ll say it for you. I advised you before I came here to flirt with this nice big man. I was thinking for you, doing what I should do myself. I hold that a sensible girl must get really intimate with a man whom she may eventually marry. Under our stupid shibboleths and conventions that is called ‘flirting.’ There’s no harm in it, up to a point. In my opinion you have passed that point.”
“Have I?” Cicely considered this pensively.
“Yes; he has behaved with astounding patience and consideration. He is crystal-clear. He wants you. If you don’t want him, say so, and have done with it. I think I can read you as easily as you read him. You would like to please your mother, who, for the first time in her amazing life, is feeling, as you told me, forlorn; you are getting fed up with war work and bottle-washing, and you hanker for a change, any change; also, you have a vague and quite excellent notion that Lord Wilverley, as a son-in-law, might persuade your mother to let him take Upworthy in hand. Probably he would, with little coaxing from you. In your less robust moments you rather gloat over this opportunity of self-sacrifice. On the other hand, it’s obvious that you don’t really love this good, honest fellow; you are piqued because Romeo did the vanishing stunt. You might have come to some sort of an understanding, but silly pride prevented that. Agatha captured her John right enough.”
“Because she knew that he loved her.”
“In your funny little heart you believe that Romeo loves you. Pride upset his apple-cart. Now—what are you going to do?”
Cicely, to Miss Tiddle’s rage and disgust, answered the question by melting into tears. Tiddy, without a word, rose from her chair, opened an umbrella, and sat down under it with a derisive smile upon her lips.