Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/141

Rh American girls, it was only fair to let their friend have a turn with an English one.

"Pay as much as you like, but don't pay with your sister!" Mrs. Gosselin replied; while Hugh submitted that it was just his sister who was required to make the payment his. She turned his logic to easy scorn, and she waited on the terrace till she had seen the two explorers reappear. When the ladies went to dress for dinner she expressed to her daughter her extreme disapproval of such conduct, and Mary did nothing more to justify herself than to exclaim at first, "Poor dear man!" and then to say, "I was afraid you wouldn't like it." There were reservations in her silence that made Mrs. Gosselin uneasy, and she was glad that at dinner Mr. Bolton-Brown had to take in Mrs. Ashbury; it served him so right. This arrangement had, in Mrs. Gosselin's eyes, the added merit of serving Mrs. Ashbury right. She was more uneasy than ever when, after dinner, in the drawing-room, she saw Mary sit for a period on the same small sofa with the culpable American. This young couple leaned back together