“You must remember that it takes time for decent people to become acclimatized to your methods, but they will do their best.”
Miss Ransome’s heart—though, in its wrong, shifty way, not uncourageous—gave a dull thud of dismay. To accept with disarming humility the admission thus cordially offered, and go with smiling readiness to meet the buffets in store for her, was plainly the only wise course to pursue, and no one was better aware of it than herself. Yet at the awful ordeal ahead of her the flesh jibbed.
“Is not this afternoon rather soon?” she asked diffidently.
“What is there to wait for?”
The trenchant question could have but the same answer as Bonnybell’s own inquiry as to what she had done to deserve such goodness had elicited from Mrs. Tancred. After a moment the latter resumed—
“I cannot pretend to you that your visit will be a pleasant one, but, as I said, they will do their best.”
At the terrific view thus conjured up of Catherine and Miss Barnacre’s best, Bonnybell’s artifices fell away from her, and in a spasm of most real consternation she dropped down on her knees beside Camilla, in the attitude most reprobated by that lady, and cried out—
“Oh, I do not think I can bear it! They will put their fingers on all my weak spots, and I have so many—many!”
Mrs. Tancred’s answer was to twitch the gown clutched by the bride-elect’s convulsive fingers out of them, and say—
“They cannot well be more uncomplimentary to you than I am.”