“I suppose she would. But I hope she won't do it.”
“So do I, for poor young Doctor Bayliss's sake, if nothin' else. He's so good and so patient with it all. And he's just eaten up with jealousy; anybody can see that. I'm scared to death that he and this Heathcroft man will have some sort of—of a fight or somethin'. That would be awful, wouldn't it!”
I did not answer. My apprehensions were not on Herbert Bayliss's account. He could look out for himself. It was Frances' happiness I was thinking of.
“Hosy,” said Hephzy, very seriously indeed, “there's somethin' else. I'm not sure that Mr. Heathcroft is serious at all. Somethin' Mrs. Bayliss said to me makes me feel a little mite anxious. She said Carleton Heathcroft was a great lady's man. She told me some things about him that—that—Well, I wish Frances wasn't so friendly with him, that's all.”
I shrugged my shoulders, pretending more indifference than I felt.
“She's a sensible girl,” said I. “She doesn't need a guardian.”
“I know, but—but he's way up in society, Lady Carey's heir and all that. She can't help bein' flattered by his attentions to her. Any girl would be, especially an English girl that thinks as much of class and all that as they do over here and as she does. I wish I knew how she did feel toward him.”
“Why don't you ask her?”
Hephzy shook her head. “I wouldn't dare,” she said. “She'd take my head off. We're on awful thin ice, you and I, with her, as it is. She treats us real nicely now, but that's because we don't interfere. If I should try just once to tell her what she ought to do she'd flare up like a bonfire. And then do the other thing to show her independence.”
“I suppose she would,” I admitted, gloomily.