Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/166

156 fixed, and of trying to remain humble when people expressed without ceremony that such a match was a wonder for such a girl. Her mother, on the other hand, was devotedly active. She treated the situation with private humor but with public zeal, and, making it both real and ideal, told so many fibs about it that there were none left for Mary. The girl had failed to understand Mrs. Gosselin's interest in this elaborate pleasantry; the good lady had seen in it from the first more than she herself had been able to see. Mary performed her task mechanically, sceptically; but Mrs. Gosselin attacked hers with conviction, and had really the air at moments of thinking that their fable had crystallized into fact. Mary allowed her as little of this attitude as possible, and was ironical about her duplicity—warnings which the elder lady received with gayety, until one day when repetition had made them act on her nerves. Then she begged her daughter, with sudden asperity, not to talk to her as if she were a fool. She had already had words with Hugh about some aspects of the affair—so