"
"Perhaps!" Deleah acquiesced seriously. "I must think about what you say."
"You've done me a great honour to mention it, Miss Deleah. You won't think
I'm taking upon myself in any way to give you my opinion?"
"Oh, Mr. Gibbon! How could I ever think such a thing!" Deleah said, but
began at once to be a little ashamed of the confidence she had made. With
a man who could ask if he was "taking upon himself" she ought to have been
more reserved, she thought.
CHAPTER XIII
The Gay, Gilded Scene
Mrs. Day, being told that her daughters proposed to go unchaperoned to the
Assembly Rooms that night, declared that for them to do so was unheard-of
and not to be sanctioned. But, under the strain of adversity the poor
woman's will, never a strong one, had weakened. She was painfully
conscious of her own helplessness in the grip of circumstances, and was
always troubled with doubts as to the wisdom of her own judgment. By the
time her day's work was over she was too tired to stand up against any
power she came into collision with. In all that concerned Bessie she was
absolutely feeble. Bessie was victor always, not by reason of superior
strength but through fractiousness, through stubbornness, through a
hysterical determination to talk the opposing voices down, through her
habit of crying like a baby when contradicted, and flinging things about.
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