Mrs. Caldwell changed countenance. "Did he indeed?" she observed with a sniff. Then she reflected. "And what had you been saying to draw such a remark from him?"
"I said I didn't want to be married," Beth blurted out with an effort.
"How could you tell Count Gustav such a story, Beth?" Mrs. Caldwell asked, shaking her head reproachfully.
"It was no story, mamma."
"Nonsense, Beth," her mother rejoined. "It is nothing but perverseness that makes you say such things. You feel more interesting, I believe, when you are in opposition. If I had refused to allow you to be married, you would have been ready to run away. I know girls! They all want to be married, and they all pretend they don't. Why, when I was a girl I thought of nothing else; but I didn't talk about it."
"Perhaps you had nothing else to think about," Beth ventured.
"And what have you to think about, pray?"
Beth clasped her hands, and her grey eyes dilated.
"Beth, don't look like that," her mother remonstrated. "You are always acting, and it is such a pity—as you will find when you go out into the world, I am afraid, and people avoid you."
"I didn't know I was doing anything peculiar," Beth said; "and how am I to help it if I don't know?"