‘Betty, I appeal to you,’ says Dominick. ‘Did I throw a stone? Come, speak up. I take this as a distinct insult. The man who would throw a stone at a woman—He’s gone!’ says Mr. Fitzgerald, staring at Carew’s disappearing form. ‘Well, I do call that mean. And I had arranged a peroration that would have astonished the natives. Anyway, Susan’—turning—‘what did I say to offend him? Called her a bud. Isn’t a bud a nice thing? I declare he’s as touchy about her as though she were his best girl.’ ‘What’s a best girl?’ asks Betty. ‘The one you like best.’ ‘Well, perhaps she’s his’—growing interested. ‘Susan, I do believe he is in love with her.’ ‘Do you?’ says Susan thoughtfully. And then: ‘Oh no! Boys never fall in love.’ ‘Dom thinks they do,’ says Betty, turning a saucy glance on Fitzgerald. She flings a rose at him. ‘Who’s your best girl?’ asks she. ‘Need you ask?’ returns that youth with his most sentimental air. ‘I don’t think I quite approve of her,’ says Miss Barry, joining in the conversation at this moment, and shaking her curls severely; ‘I thought her a little free this afternoon.’ ‘Oh, auntie!’ ‘Certainly, Susan! Most distinctly free.’ ‘I thought her one of the gentlest and quietest girls I ever met,’ says Carew, who has strolled back to them after his short ebullition of temper—unable, indeed, to keep away. ‘What do you know of girls?’ says Miss Barry scornfully. ‘I’m sure she’s gentle,’ says Dominick, who is so devoted to Carew that he would risk a great deal—even his friendship—to keep him out of trouble, ‘and very, very good; because she is beyond all doubt most femininely dull.’ ‘Pig!’ says Betty, in a whisper. She makes a little movement towards him, and a second later gets a pinch and a wild yell out of him. ‘What I say I maintain,’ says Miss Barry magisterially. ‘She may be a nice girl, a gentle girl, the grandest girl that was ever known—I’m the last in the world to depreciate anyone—but who is she? That’s what I want to know. And no one knows who she is. Perhaps of the lower classes, for all we know. And, indeed, I noticed a few queer turns of speech. And when I said she was free, Susan, I meant it. I heard her distinctly call that child’—pointing to him—‘“Tommy.” Now, if she is, as I firmly believe—your father is a person of no discrimination, you know—a person of a lower grade than ourselves, didn’t it show great freedom to do that? Yes, she distinctly said “Tommy.”’ ‘Well, she didn’t say “Hell and Tommy,” any way,’ says Dominick, who sometimes runs over to London to see the theatres. ‘If she had,’ says Miss Barry with dignity—she has never seen the outside of a theatre—‘I should have had no hesitation whatsoever in sending for the sergeant and giving her in charge.’ CHAPTER XXXVII. ‘She is outwardly All that bewitches sense, all that entices, Nor is it in our virtue to uncharm it.’