His letters! What could that have to do with it? Charlie also had had his letters, one of them a bill which he did not view with any satisfaction; but even at twenty-one a man already learns to disguise his feelings, and sits down to dinner cheerfully though he has received a bill by the post. Charlie’s mind at first could not perceive any connection between Bee’s withdrawal upstairs and Aubrey’s disappearance. It was Betty who suggested, sitting down very close to him, that it looked as if Aubrey and Bee had quarrelled too.
“Perhaps that is what it is,” she said, as if she had found out a satisfactory reason. “Lovers always quarrel; and mamma will have taken Aubrey’s part, and Bee will be so angry, and feel as if she could never forgive him. There, that is what it must be.”
“A man may quarrel with his sweetheart,” said Charlie, severely, “but he needn’t spoil other people’s dinner for that;” however, they comforted themselves that this was the most likely explanation, and that all would come right in the morning. And they were very young and hungry, having eaten nothing since the veal at one o’clock. And these two made on the whole a very satisfactory meal.
The scene upstairs was very different. Mrs. Kingsward sent Moulsey away on pretence of getting her some tea, and then turned to her daughter who stood by the dressing-table and stared blankly, without seeing anything, into those mysterious depths of the glass which are so suggestive to people in trouble. She said, faintly, “Bee, I would so much rather you would not ask me any more questions to-night.”
“That is,” said Bee, “you would like to send me away to be miserable by myself without even knowing what it is, while you will take your sleeping draught and forget it. How can you be so selfish, mamma? And you have made my Aubrey join in the conspiracy against me--my Aubrey who belongs to me as papa does to you. If you are against us it is all very well, though I can’t imagine why you should be against us--but at least you need not interfere between Aubrey and me.”
“Oh, my dear child, my poor darling!” said Mrs. Kingsward, wringing her hands.
“It is all very well to call me your poor child, when it is you that are making me poor,” said Bee.