"You have compunctions? You're too good-natured."
"I dare say I hit rather wild. It will look better for me to stop over
twenty-four hours."
Mrs. Gosselin fixed her eyes on a distant object. "Let no one ever say
you're selfish!"
"_Does_ anyone ever say it?"
"You're too generous, you're too soft, you're too foolish. But if it
will give you any pleasure Mary and I will wait till to-morrow."
"And Hugh, too, won't he, and Bolton-Brown?"
"Hugh will do as he pleases. But don't keep the American."
"Why not? He's all right."
"That's why I want him to go," said Mrs. Gosselin, who could treat a
matter with candour, just as she could treat it with humour, at the
right moment.
The party at Bosco broke up and there was a general retreat to town.
Hugh Gosselin pleaded pressing business, he accompanied the young
American to London. His mother and sister came back on the morrow, and
Bolton-Brown went in to see them, as he often did, at tea-time. He found
Mrs. Gosselin alone in the drawing-room, and she took such a convenient
occasion to mention to him, what she had withheld on the eve of their
departure from Bosco, the reason why poor Maud Ashbury's frantic assault
on the master of that property would be vain. He was greatly surprised,
the more so that Hugh hadn't told him. Mrs. Gosselin replied that Hugh
didn't know: she had not seen him all day and it had only just come out.
Hugh's friend at any rate was deeply interested, and his interest took
for several minutes the form of throbbing silence. At last Mrs. Gosselin
heard a sound below, on which she said quickly: "That's Hugh--I'll tell
him now!" She left the room with the request that their visitor would
wait for Mary, who would be down in a moment. During the instants that
he spent alone the visitor lurched, as if he had been on a deck in a
blow, to the window, and stood there with his hands in his pockets,
staring vacantly into Chester Street; then, turning away, he gave
himself, with an odd ejaculation, an impatient shake which had the
effect of enabling him to meet Mary Gosselin composedly enough when she
came in. It took her mother apparently some time to communicate the news
to Hugh, so that Bolton-Brown had a considerable margin for nervousness
and hesitation before he could say to the girl, abruptly, but with an
attempt at a voice properly gay: "You must let me very heartily
congratulate you!"