'Mr. Hammond. I'm sure he does. I am so sunburnt and so horrid!'
'But you are not ugly. Why, Molly, what are you dreaming about?'
'Oh, yes, I am ugly. I may not seem so to you, perhaps, because you are used to me, but I know he must think me very plain compared with Lesbia, whom he admires so much.'
'Yes, he admires Lesbia. There is no doubt of that.'
'And I know he thinks me plain,' said Molly, contemplating Wetherlam with sorrowful eyes, as if the sequence were inevitable.
'My dearest girl, what nonsense! Plain, forsooth? Ugly, quotha? Why, there are not a finer pair of eyes in Westmoreland than my Molly's, or a prettier smile, or whiter teeth.'
'But all the rest is horrid,' said Mary, intensely in earnest. 'I am sunburnt, freckled, and altogether odious--like a haymaker or a market woman. Grandmother has said so often enough, and I know it is the truth. I can see it in Mr. Hammond's manner.'
'What! freckles and sunburn, and the haymaker, and all that?' cried Maulevrier, laughing. 'What an expressive manner Jack's must be, if it can convey all that--like Lord Burleigh's nod, by Jove. Why, what a goose you are, Mary. Jack thinks you a very nice girl, and a very pretty girl, I'll be bound; but aren't you clever enough to understand that when a man is over head and ears in love with one woman, he is apt to seem just a little indifferent to all the other women in the world? and there is no doubt Jack is desperately in love with Lesbia.'
'You ought not to let him be in love with her,' protested Mary. 'You know it can only lead to his unhappiness. You must know what grandmother is, and how she has made up her mind that Lesbia is to marry some great person. You ought not to have brought Mr. Hammond here. It is like letting him into a trap.'
'Do you think it was wrong?' asked her brother, smiling at her earnestness. 'I should be very sorry if poor Jack should come to grief. But still, if Lesbia likes him--which I think she does--we ought to be able to talk over the dowager.'
'Never,' cried Mary. 'Grandmother would never give way. You have no idea how ambitious she is. Why, once when Lesbia was in a poetical mood, and said she would marry the man she liked best in the world, if he were a pauper, her ladyship flew into a terrible passion, and told her she would renounce her, that she would curse her, if she were to marry beneath her, or marry without her grandmother's consent.'