Should Bettina become involved in suspicion and gossip due to her last night’s experience, they would both have learned to know Bettina’s position. They would also understand how entirely accidental her entrance into the secret garden had been and how impossible to leave after the small gate had closed behind her.
Certainly the French authorities must accept so simple an explanation.
Mrs. Burton also felt a little amused by Miss Patricia’s now transparent reason for desiring her to be more elaborately dressed for dinner than she had originally intended.
As a matter of fact on retiring to her room she had hesitated before putting on the exquisite costume which Aunt Patricia had evidently just purchased for her from one of the best known designers of women’s clothes in Paris. The ungraciousness with which she had been ordered to her room and told to dress a second time was also explained. For years, ever since Miss Patricia’s inheritance from her brother of her large fortune, both Mrs. Burton and her husband, Captain Burton, had been protesting against the extravagant gifts which Miss Patricia frequently insisted upon bestowing upon them, and especially upon Mrs. Burton, who was the one person for whom she cared most in the world.
Whatever Miss Patricia’s economies and conscientious scruples with regard to spending money upon herself, she had no such scruples in connection with Mrs. Burton.
Therefore risking the possibility both of wounding and offending Miss Patricia, Mrs. Burton had positively declined allowing her to bestow upon her any gifts of value.
An ordinary evening frock, Miss Patricia would of course declare possessed no value. Yet Mrs. Burton had appreciated that the dress she was at this moment wearing at dinner was not of this character.
She had felt she should refuse to accept it, but she had not wished to hurt Miss Patricia and also she had not wished to relinquish the dress once she had tried it on.
It looked simple, yet Mrs. Burton had a sufficient knowledge and appreciation of clothes to recognize the exceptional beauty of her present gift.
As she sat talking and laughing with Senator Duval, Miss Patricia surveyed both Mrs. Burton and her own purchase with entire satisfaction.