"But apparently Hugh doesn't see things that way. He's told me--"
"He's told me," I persisted, boldly, "that he--he loves me; and he's made me say that--that I love him."
"And that's where you're so foolish, dear Miss Adare. You let him take you in. It isn't that he's not sincere; I don't say that for a minute. But people can't go about marrying every one they love, now can they? I should think you'd have seen that--with the heaps of men you had there at Halifax--hardly room to step over them."
I said, slyly, "I never saw them that way."
"Oh, well, I did. And by the way, I wonder what's become of that Captain Venables. He was a case! He could take more liberties in a half-hour--don't you think?"
"Then that must have been your fault. Talk about Mr. Millinger! Our men aren't in it with yours--not when it comes to the real thing."
I got back to the subject in which I was most interested by saying, as I spread another note before me:
"It seems to be the real thing with Hugh."
"Oh, I dare say it is. It was the real thing with Jack. I don't say"--her voice took on a tender tremolo--"I don't say that it wasn't the real thing with me. But that didn't make any difference to father. It was the real thing with Pauline Gray--when she was down there at Baltimore; but when father picked her out for Jack, because of her money and his relations with old Mr. Gray--"
I couldn't help half turning round, to cry out in tones of which I was unable to conceal the exasperation: "But I don't see how you can all let yourselves be hooked by the nose like that--not even by Mr. Brokenshire!"
Her fatalistic resignation gave me a sense of helplessness.
"Oh, well, you will before father has done with you--if Hugh goes on this way. Father's only playing with you so far."
"He can't touch me," I declared, indignantly.
"But he can touch Hugh. That's all he needs to know, as far as you're concerned." She asked, in another tone, "What are you answering now?"
I told her it was the invitation to Mrs. Allen's dance.
"Then tear it up and say I can't go. Say I've a previous engagement. I'd forgotten that they had that odious Mrs. Tracy Allen there."
I tore up the sheet slowly, throwing the fragments into the waste-paper basket.