Well, Trixie, and is one to congratulate you?" asked Mrs.
O'Donovan Florence.
"Congratulate me--? On what?" asked Beatrice.
"On what, indeed!" cried the vivacious Irishwoman. "Don't try
to pull the wool over the eyes of an old campaigner like me."
Beatrice looked blank.
"I can't in the least think what you mean," she said.
"Get along with you," cried Mrs. O'Donovan Florence; and she
brandished her sunshade threateningly. "On your engagement to
Mr.--what's this his name is?--to be sure."
She glanced indicatively down the lawn, in the direction of
Peter's retreating tweeds.
Beatrice had looked blank. But now she looked--first, perhaps,
for a tiny fraction of a second, startled--then gently,
compassionately ironical.
"My poor Kate! Are you out of your senses?" she enquired, in
accents of concern, nodding her head, with a feint of pensive
pity.
"Not I," returned Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, cheerfully
confident. "But I 'm thinking I could lay my finger on a
long-limbed young Englishman less than a mile from here, who
very nearly is. Hasn't he asked you yet?"
"Es-to bete?" Beatrice murmured, pitifully nodding again.
"Ah, well, if he has n't, it's merely a question of time when
he will," said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence. "You've only to notice
the famished gaze with which he devours you, to see his
condition. But don't try to hoodwink me. Don't pretend that
this is news to you."
"News!" scoffed Beatrice. "It's news and nonsense--the product
of your irrepressible imagination. Mr. What's-this-his-name-is,
as you call him, and I are the barest acquaintances. He's
our temporary neighbour--the tenant for the season of Villa
Floriano--the house you can catch a glimpse of, below there,
through the trees, on the other side of the river."
"Is he, now, really? And that's very interesting too. But I
wasn't denying it." Mrs. O'Donovan Florence smiled, with
derisive sweetness. "The fact of his being the tenant of the
house I can catch a glimpse of, through the trees, on the other
side of the river, though a valuable acquisition to my stores
of knowledge, does n't explain away his famished glance unless,
indeed, he's behind with the rent: but even then, it's not
famished he'd look, but merely anxious and persuasive. I'm
a landlord myself. No, Trixie, dear, you've made roast meat of
the poor fellow's heart, as the poetical Persians express it;
and if he has n't told you so yet with his tongue, he tells the
whole world so with his eyes as often as he allows them to rest
on their loadstone, your face. You can see the sparks and the
smoke escaping from them, as though they were chimneys. If
you've not observed that for yourself, it can only be that
excessive modesty has rendered you blind. The man is head over
ears in love with you. Nonsense or bonsense, that is the sober
truth."