"Indeed I am, I see much more."
"What do you see?"
"Mary won't in the least care for America. Don't tell me she will," Mrs.
Gosselin added, "for you know perfectly you don't believe it."
"She'll care for her husband, she'll care for everything that concerns
him."
"He's very nice, in his little way he's delightful. But as an
alternative to Lord Beaupré he's ridiculous!"
"Mary's in a position in which she has nothing to do with alternatives."
"For the present, yes, but not for ever. She'll have enough of your New
York; they'll come back here. I see the future dark," Mrs. Gosselin
pursued, inexorably musing.
"Tell me then all you see."
"She'll find poor Guy wretchedly married, and she'll be very sorry for
him."
"Do you mean that he'll make love to her? You give a queer account of
your paragon."
"He'll value her sympathy. I see life as it is."
"You give a queer account of your daughter."
"I don't give _any_ account. She'll behave perfectly," Mrs. Gosselin
somewhat inconsequently subjoined.
"Then what are you afraid of?"
"She'll be sorry for him, and it will be all a worry."
"A worry to whom?"
The good lady was silent a moment. "To me," she replied. "And to you as
well."
"Then they mustn't come back."
"That will be a greater worry still."
"Surely not a greater--a smaller. We'll put up with the lesser evil."
"Nothing will prevent her coming to a sense, eventually, of what _might_
have been. And when they _both_ recognize it----"
"It will be very dreadful!" Hugh exclaimed, completing gaily his
mother's phrase. "I don't see, however," he added, "what in all this you
do with Bessie Whiteroy."
"Oh, he'll be tired of her; she's hard, she'll have become despotic. I
see life as it is," the good lady repeated.
"Then all I can say is that it's not very nice! But they sha'n't come
back: _I_'ll attend to that!" said Hugh Gosselin, who has attended to it
up to this time successfully, though the rest of his mother's prophecy
is so far accomplished (it was her second hit) as that Charlotte
Firminger is now, strange as it may seem, Lady Beaupré.