Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/23

 local inn. No, Richard, you mustn't do it. I cannot risk our aunt's digestion."

Lady Drewitt always discouraged the idea that life contained either sentiment or ideals. To be intangible in conversation with her was impossible. She admitted of no distinction between imagination and lying. To her all extremes were foolish, optimists and pessimists being equally culpable. She pooh-poohed anything and everything that was not directly or indirectly connected with Burke (once she would have admitted "L'Almanach de Gotha"). Burke to her girlish eyes had always been the open sesame to happiness.

As for the Seymours, they were merely Lady Drewitt's echoes. Lord Drewitt had once said they reminded him of St. Paul's definition of love.

As Beresford smoked his own cigarettes and drank Lady Drewitt's excellent port, he was conscious that there were a hundred and one reasons that he might have advanced to any one but his aunt. It would have been foolish to tell her that within him had been awakened a spirit of romance and adventure, that the wanderlust was upon him.

She would merely have said that he must see Sir Edmund Tobbitt, her pet physician, and have forbidden him to use German words in her presence.

"And how do you propose to live whilst you are pursuing your ridiculous Nature, exposing yourself to all sorts of weather?" Lady Drewitt had next demanded.

"Well, I've got nearly two hundred pounds,"