“Oh, I think you must take all Gerald says with a grain of salt. He exaggerates dreadfully, and all boys like to seem Byronic. So do most men, for the matter of that!”
“He looks so young. I can’t believe that he’s really very naughty.”
“Well, my dear, there’s no doubt about his mother’s maid. The evidence is of the—most conclusive order. I know I should be dreadfully angry with him, but every one is so virtuous now-a-days that a change is quite refreshing. And he’s so young, he may reform. Englishmen start galloping to the devil, but as they grow older they nearly always change horses and amble along gently to respectability, a wife, and seventeen children.”
“I like the contrast of his green eyes and his dark hair.”
“My dear, it can’t be denied that he’s made to capture the feminine heart. I never try to resist him myself. He’s so extremely convincing when he tells you some outrageous fib.”
Bertha went to her room and looked at herself in the glass, then put on her most becoming dinner-dress.
“Good gracious,” said Miss Ley. “You’ve not put that on for Gerald? You’ll turn the boy’s head, he’s dreadfully susceptible.”
“It’s the first one I came across,” replied Bertha, innocently.
Chapter XXIX
“You’ve quite captured Gerald’s heart,” said Miss Ley to Bertha a day or two later. “He’s confided to me that he thinks you ‘perfectly stunning.’”