“I don't see why. She is my own aunt.”
“Will you promise?”
“Please don't ask me, mother. I—oh, don't you understand? It is interesting there, that's all. It isn't wrong to go. And the moment you forbid it you make me want to go back.”
“Were there any other people there to dinner?” Grace asked, with sudden suspicion.
“Only one man. A lawyer named Akers.”
The name meant nothing to Grace Cardew.
“A young man?”
“Not very young. In his thirties, I should think,” Lily hesitated again. She had meant to tell her mother of the engagement for the next day, but Grace's attitude made it difficult. To be absolutely forbidden to meet Louis Akers at the gallery, and to be able to give no reason beyond the fact that she had met him at the Doyle house, seemed absurd.
“A gentleman?”
“I hardly know,” Lily said frankly. “In your sense of the word, perhaps not, mother. But he is very clever.”