Part 68 (1/2)

”Ah, that was nice, I should think,” Mrs. Caldwell observed graciously. ”And what were you talking about?”

”Being married, princ.i.p.ally,” Beth answered.

Mrs. Caldwell beamed above her knitting. ”And what did he say?”

”He strongly advised me not to marry if I didn't want to.”

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?”

”Just help it by only doing as you are told until you are able to judge for yourself. Look at the silly way you have been talking this afternoon! What must Count Gustav have thought of you? Never be so silly again. You _must_ be married now, you know. When a girl lets a man kiss her, she _has_ to marry him.”

Beth had been watching her mother's fingers as she knitted until she was half mesmerised by the bright glint of the needles; but now she woke up and burst out laughing. ”If that be the case,” she said, ”he is not the only one that I shall have to marry.”

Mrs. Caldwell's hands dropped on her lap, and she looked up at Beth in dismay. ”What do you mean?” she said.

”Just that,” Beth answered.

”Do you mean to tell me you have allowed men to kiss you?” Mrs.

Caldwell cried.

Beth looked up as if trying to keep her countenance.

”You wicked girl, how dare you?”

”Well, mamma, if it were wicked, why didn't you warn me?” Beth said.

”How was I to know?”

”Your womanly instincts ought to have taught you better.”

Unfortunately for this theory, all Beth's womanly instincts set in the opposite direction. Her father's ardent temperament warred in her with Aunt Victoria's Puritan principles, and there was no telling as yet which would prevail.

Beth made no reply to that last a.s.sertion of her mother's, but remained half sitting on the table, with her feet stretched out in front of her, and her hands supporting her on either side, which brought her shoulders up to her ears. It was a most inelegant att.i.tude, and peculiarly exasperating to Mrs. Caldwell.