"Dear Bridget ... I may call you that for the sake of old days?"
"If you like."
"This must make you very happy. Society mothers of marriageable daughters will tear their transformations from their heads, and dance upon them in despair, when they hear that Beau s'est rangé. But that I don't hold forth to worldly ears I would enlarge upon the immense social advantages of such a union for that dear child."
"Of course, I am aware that it is an excellent match."
Were her ears so unworldly? The phrase rankled in her conscience like a thorn. And in what respect were those Society mothers less managing than the nun? she asked herself. Could any of them have been more astute, more eager, more bent on hooking the desirable parti for their girls than she had shown herself just now? And was this, again, an unworldly voice whispering to her that the publicity ensured by a paragraph penned by this gossip-loving little lady would fix him even more securely, bind him more strongly, make it even less possible for him to retreat, should he desire it—by burning his boats behind him, so that he had no alternative but to go on? She sickened with loathing of herself. But for her there was no retreat either. Here Lady Hannah helped her unawares. With a side-glance at the noble face beside her, pale olive-hued, worn and faded beyond the age of the woman by her great labours and her greater griefs, the arched black eyebrows sprinkled of late with grey, the eyelids thin over the mobile eyeballs, purpled with lack of sleep and secret, bitter weeping, the close-folded, deeply cut, eloquent mouth withered like a japonica-bloom that lingers on in frost, the strong, salient chin framed in the snowy, starched guimpe, she faltered:
"You don't shy at the notion of the par—the announcement in the Siege Gazette, I mean?..."
"Upon the contrary, I approve of it," said the Mother, and walked on very fast, for the bells of the Catholic Church were ringing for Benediction.
"Is it good-night, or may I come in?" Beauvayse whispered to Lynette in the porch.
She dipped her slender fingers in the little holy-water font beside the door, and held them out to him.
"Come in," she answered, and held white, wet fingers out to him. He touched them with a puzzled smile.