‘What’s the meaning of all this, Nita?’
‘All what, aunt?’
‘This driving about with young Wellfield, and having accidents, and losing your temper—you, of all people, and insulting your old aunt, and looking miserable?’
‘I don’t know why you should seek to attach any meaning at all to it. I was driving carelessly, when we suddenly met a traction-engine coming up the hill; the horses bolted, and but for Mr. Wellfield’s getting the reins into his own hands—but for his courage and coolness, we should both have been dead now. Surely that is enough to unnerve anyone!’
‘Then if you were so unnerved, what induced you to go to the bonnet-shop in Clyderhow?’
‘I overrated my strength, I suppose, and in the joy of being safe imagined myself less shaken than I really was.’
‘Humph!’
Miss Shuttleworth went to the drawer in Nita’s wardrobe, which was sacred to the caps she always wore at the Abbey. Looking through her store, she carefully selected a yellow and green one; the most intrinsically hideous and extrinsically least suited to her style of beauty of any of the collection, and then she returned to the glass to put it on.
‘Don’t fall in love with Mr. Jerome Wellfield, Nita. Let him fall in love with you if he likes; but don’t you do it,’ she said, deliberately.
‘Aunt Margaret! do you want to insult me?’ she asked, sitting up, pale and breathless with anger.