Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/41

 "Do you live in London?" he asked, grasping at this chance of finding out something about her.

"We're going there for the Season," she said, "to a hotel of all places."

"May I ask which?" inquired Beresford, seizing this opportunity with avidity. "I know most of them," he added lamely.

"The Ritz-Carlton." She shuddered.

"I've always heard it quite well-spoken of," he said with mock seriousness.

"Ugh!" she grimaced. "I so dislike all that; but auntie insists."

"She is conventional?" he suggested.

"As conventional as the suburbs. I'm supposed to be with friends in Yorkshire now," she added with the smile of a mischievous child. "If she could see me here, she would take to her bed with an attack of nerves. Poor auntie! Sometimes I am quite sorry for her," and again the little gurgling laugh belied her words.

"I'm afraid you have convicted yourself," he said. "If you had the courage of your convictions, you would go tramping and let the world know it."

"No," she said; "it isn't that; but during the last four or five years I've given auntie such a series of shocks, that she really must have time to recover. First I went as a V.A.D., then I drove a Red Cross car in France and—well, now I must give way to her a little and become a hypocrite."

"No doubt that is where you got your ideas readjusted."