human
So you didn't horsewhip and you didn't prosecute. You preferred to wriggle out!
gpt
Yes, said Mavick, too much pleased with the result to be belligerent,
human
I let the newspaper do the wriggling.
gpt
Oh, my dear, I can trust you for that. Have you any idea how it got hold of the details?
human
No; you don't think McDonald--
gpt
McDonald! I'd as soon suspect myself. So would you.
human
Well, everybody knew it already, for that matter. I only wonder that some newspaper didn't get on to it before. What did Evelyn say?
gpt
Nothing more than what you heard at dinner. She thought it amusing that there should be such a crowd to gaze at the house, simply because a picture of it had appeared in a newspaper. She thought her father must be a very important personage. I didn't undeceive her. At times, you know, dear, I think so myself.
human
Yes, I've noticed that, said Mavick, with a good-natured laugh, in which Carmen joined,
gpt
You ought to be ashamed to take me up that way. I just wanted to talk about the coming-out reception. You know I had come over to your opinion that seventeen was perhaps better than eighteen, considering Evelyn's maturity. When I was seventeen I was just as good as I am now.
human
I don't doubt it,
gpt
But don't you see this affair upsets all our arrangements? It's very vexatious.
human
I don't see it exactly. By-the-way, what do you think of the escape suggested by the Spectrum, in the assertion that you and Evelyn had arranged to go to Europe? The steamer sails tomorrow.
gpt
Think! exclaimed Carmen.
human
Do you think I am going to be run, as you call it, by the newspapers? They run everything else. I'm not politics, I'm not an institution, I'm not even a revolution. No, I thank you. It answers my purpose for them to say we have gone.
gpt
I suppose you can keep indoors a few days. As to the reception, I had arranged my business for it. I may be in Mexico or Honolulu the following winter.
human
Well, we can't have it now. You see that.
gpt
Carmen, I don't care a rap what the public thinks or says. The child's got to face the world some time, and look out for herself. I fancy she will not like it as much as you did.
human
Very likely. Perhaps I liked it because I had to fight it. Evelyn never will do that.
gpt
She hasn't the least idea what the world is like.
human
Don't you be too sure of that, my dear; you don't understand yet what a woman feels and knows. You think she only sees and thinks what she is told. The conceit of men is most amusing about this. Evelyn is deeper than you think. The discrimination of that child sometimes positively frightens me--how she sees into things. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if she actually knew her father and mother!
gpt
Then she beats me, said Mavick, with another laugh,
human
Well --there was a Madonna-like smile on her lips, and she put out the toe of her slender foot and appeared to study it for a moment--
gpt
Spanish or French?
human
Just a plain nun. But mamma would not hear of it. Mamma was just a bit worldly.
gpt
I never should have suspected it, said Mavick, with equal gravity.
human
But how did you live in those early days, way back there?
gpt
Oh! and Carmen looked up with the most innocent, open-eyed expression,
human
Naturally. We all try to do that.
gpt
But, of course, and Carmen was lively again,
human
It would seem so.
gpt
Ah, deary me, it's such a world! Don't you think, dear, that we have had enough domestic notoriety for one year?
human
Quite. It would do for several.
gpt
And we will put it off a year?
human
Arrange as you like.
gpt
It will be such a relief to McDonald. She insisted it was too soon. And Carmen whirled out of her chair, went behind her husband, lifted with her delicate fingers a lock of grayish hair on his forehead, deposited the lightest kiss there--
human
Nobody in the world knows how good you are except me,