"Yes. Mr. George Boult. I keep telling you, mama. That day we wrote the letter, I ran upstairs unexpectedly, and they were sitting on the sofa, and that old man had got his arm round Bessie's waist."
"George Boult's arm? Bessie? Our Bessie?"
"Yes. Now, don't faint, or begin to cry. I am certain they have gone to be married."
"Bessie never would! She never would! It is awful of her! It can't be!
It can't be!"
"It is. I am sure of it as if I were in the church, seeing it done. Oh, mama, don't give way. Don't! I have told you, so that when they come back, here as they will—they will! in half an hour, you may be quite brave, and not give way before them."
Deleah called Mr. Pretty from the cellar to the shop, and taking her mother's arm led her to the sitting-room. "Now if you feel you must collapse or cry, mama," she adjured her parent with a touch of the scorn the younger generation felt for elders accustomed, in that day, to meet all crises with tears and faints, or at the least wild gesticulation—"if you must, do it now, and here; so that when they come you can be calm and dignified."
"Our Bessie!" Mrs. Day kept saying, wringing her hands and looking up with appealing eyes swimming in tears. "Our Bessie! Our pretty, attractive Bessie! And that man! That old man!"
"It won't do to go on like that when they come, mama," Deleah warned her. "You can't tell him he is old. You must not even tell Bessie so, now. Bessie isn't like you and me, remember, who would have been wretched and ashamed. She thinks of his money and his carriage. She does not think she has played an underhand game. She thinks she has been cleverer than the rest of us. She is pleased with herself, and proud, and Emily is proud of her. Well, if you must cry—cry, mama. Cry all you can now, so, on no account, you shed one tear before them."
By the time Bessie appeared—she came without her bridegroom, who had thought a meeting with the mother of his bride would be, under the circumstances, awkward—Deleah's exhortations had had their effect.
Bessie—partial to "scenes" and making them, of her own, on any occasion—expecting one now was disappointed. She came in, in her white dress and bonnet, her fair plump face flushed, her eyes twinkling in anticipation of the sensation she was about to create, and found mother and sister gravely awaiting her.