"I'm attached to you, you little wretch," she said. "But I don't believe you care a straw for him."
But as she spoke her merciless eyes had pierced the girl's mask of light-heartedness. On this last morning Susan was not mistress of herself.
"You are fond of him!" she said. "Dreadfully, ridiculously fond of him like any old-fashioned girl...."
"Oh, hush!" cried Susan. Anything to stop that unmerciful proclamation. She flung herself on her knees, and her terrified protest was stifled in Lady Henrietta's arms.
"How silly we are!" said she, but she held the girl tightly. "I'm to bridle my tongue, am I? You are afraid I shall tell him? Oh, you poor little girl, you baby, is it as bad as that?"
She pushed her away, as if ashamed of her own emotion, and a fierceness came into her voice, that had been entirely kind.
"If you allow that woman to ruin your lives—!" she said. "Oh, I'm not blind, I'm not altogether stupid—! If you let her take him from us—I'll never forgive you, Susan."
Having launched her bolt, all unconscious of its stabbing irony, she recovered her bantering equanimity, and looked whimsically at her listener.
"Why are you gazing at me," she said, "as if I were about to vanish? I'm not going to die of it. I am going to take the field."
*****