‘I am not going to make any pounce upon him,’ said Millicent to her mother. ‘I won’t. You need not look so surprised. You may say what you like, but I know it is fatal to go too fast. Men don’t like that sort of thing. They see through it, though you don’t think they do. They are not quite such fools. You must go softly this time, or I shall not go into it at all.’
‘Millicent!’ said her mother severely, ‘when you talk in this wild way, how can you expect me to know what you mean?’
‘Oh, bother!’ said Millicent. The profile turned half away as she spoke was so perfect, and the lips that uttered the words so soft and rose-like, that any listener less accustomed would have distrusted her ears. Mrs. Tracy only made a little gesture of disapproval. Even to herself the mother kept up her pretensions; but Millicent was a girl of her century, and made believe only when the eye of the world was upon her. ‘I mean to take this into my own hands,’ she said. ‘You are not so clever as you were, mamma. You are getting rather old. Let me alone to treat a man like Ben Renton. I must not throw myself at his head; he must suppose, at least, that he has had hard work to secure me.’
‘And I trust it will be so, Millicent,’ said Mrs. Tracy. ‘Heaven forbid that a child of mine should throw herself at any gentleman’s head! It would break my heart, you know.’
‘Oh, yes; I know,’ said the daughter, with a laugh; ‘though I never can understand what pleasure you have in pretending and keeping up your character to me. We ought to understand each other,--if any two people do understand each other in the world,’ the young woman added, not with much perception of the melancholy mystery she was thus skimming over, but yet vaguely conscious that even the mother beside her had secrets, and would take her own way if occasion served. Each of them shocked the other by turns, though both stood low enough in point of moral appreciation. ‘You would sell me, as soon as look at me, if you could,’ Millicent went on. ‘Don’t deny it, for I know it; but Ben Renton is not in your line. It is I who must manage him.’
‘You will have your own way, I suppose, Millicent,’ said her mother; ‘though what you mean by these coarse expressions I don’t understand. What I feel is that the poor young fellow is very solitary. And I am a mother,’ Mrs. Tracy said, with a little grandeur. ‘I feel it might be of use to him to ask him up here. It keeps a young man respectable when ladies notice him. It keeps him out of bad hands.’