“I don’t understand society,” said Rowland, “and I don’t think I should ever know that part of it. How is anybody to know which you prefer, the good or the bad, if you treat them just the same?”
“Oh, everybody knows what I think of him, including himself,” said Madeline, lightly; “that’s one of our refinements. And so you are going to have Rose and Eddy to visit you in the country. You are a couple of bold people—with a boy and a girl of your own. Of course there will be fallings in love.”
Rowland laughed again, opening his mouth in simple enjoyment of the joke, as he took it. “I think I can answer for my two,” he said.
“Oh, you can’t answer for anybody!” said Lady Leighton, somewhat sharply, “Rose is a girl of the period, and scorns that kind of thing—so does my Mabel, save the mark! They are both going to do all sorts of things as soon as they are out—walk the hospitals! I don’t know what absurd projects they have. But Eddy, I warn you, is a mauvais sujet, Evelyn. He is like his father. He makes love to everybody. I don’t know what age Miss Rowland is——”
“Eighteen,” said her father.
Lady Leighton threw up her hands. “His natural prey! And she has been brought up in the country, I suppose, and believes anything that is said to her——”
“She has been brought up,” said Rowland, a little displeased with the turn the conversation was taking, “in Glasgow, which is a very different thing from the country, and perhaps not so much given to the innocence of faith.”
“Oh!” said Lady Leighton, making a dead pause. She had not the least idea how a girl could be brought up in Glasgow, any more than if it had been Timbuctoo. The country she comprehended: town she comprehended—but Glasgow! A “smart” lady’s information stops long before it comes to such a point as that.
“Perhaps,” said Evelyn, troubled by all this, “I have been imprudent. It is awkward, anyhow, to have these young people coming to us so soon, when we are scarcely settled; but it is hard to say no, when one is appealed to, for the good of others.”
“I hope,” said Rowland, “it is an appeal you never will refuse. It shocks me rather to hear you now discussing your future guests. Don’t they become sacred as soon as you invite them, like the strangers in a Bedouin’s tent? That’s our old Scotch way.”