"What is it, my dear? What's come to you?" she asked, in
alarm.
Beatrice gave a kind of groan.
"It's absurd--it's impossible," she said; "and yet, if by any
ridiculous chance you should be right, it's too horribly
horrible." She repeated her groan. "If by any ridiculous
chance you are right, the man will think that I have been
leading him on!"
"LEADING HIM ON!" Mrs. O'Donovan Florence suppressed a shriek
of ecstatic mirth. "There's no question about my being right,"
she averred soberly. "He wears his heart behind his eyeglass;
and whoso runs may read it."
"Well, then--" began Beatrice, with an air of desperation . . .
"But no," she broke off. "YOU CAN'T be right. It's
impossible, impossible. Wait. I'll tell you the whole story.
You shall see for yourself."
"Go on," said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, assuming an attitude of
devout attention, which she retained while Beatrice (not
without certain starts and hesitations) recounted the fond tale
of Peter's novel, and of the woman who had suggested the
character of Pauline.
"But OF COURSE!" cried the Irishwoman, when the tale was
finished; and this time her shriek of mirth, of glee, was not
suppressed. "Of course--you miracle of unsuspecting innocence!
The man would never have breathed a whisper of the affair to
any soul alive, save to his heroine herself--let alone to you,
if you and she were not the same. Couple that with the eyes he
makes at you, and you've got assurance twice assured. You
ought to have guessed it from the first syllable he uttered.
And when he went on about her exalted station and her fabulous
wealth! Oh, my ingenue! Oh, my guileless lambkin! And you
Trixie Belfont! Where's your famous wit? Where are your
famous intuitions?"
"BUT DON'T YOU SEE," wailed Beatrice, "don't you see the
utterly odious position this leaves me in? I've been urging
him with all my might to tell her! I said . . . oh, the things
I said!" She shuddered visibly. "I said that differences of
rank and fortune could n't matter." She gave a melancholy laugh.
"I said that very likely she'd accept him. I said she couldn't
help being . . . Oh, my dear, my dear! He'll think--of course,
he can't help thinking--that I was encouraging him--that I was
coming halfway to meet him."
"Hush, hush! It's not so bad as that," said Mrs. O'Donovan
Florence, soothingly. "For surely, as I understand it, the man
doesn't dream that you knew it was about himself he was
speaking. He always talked of the book as by a friend of his;
and you never let him suspect that you had pierced his
subterfuge."