PIKE.  All right!  Where is she?

MARIANO.  Here, sir.

PIKE.  Come right in, ma’am!

[LADY CREECH enters.]

LADY CREECH [frigidly].  I need scarcely inform you that this interview is not of my seeking. [She sits stiffly.] On the contrary, it is intensely disagreeable to me.  My brother-in-law feels that some one well acquainted with Miss Granger-Simpson’s ambitions and her inner nature should put the case finally to you before we proceed to extremities.

PIKE.  Yes, ma’am!

LADY CREECH [crossly].  Don’t mumble your words if you expect me to listen to you.

PIKE [cordially].  Go on, ma’am!

LADY CREECH.  My brother-in-law has made us aware of the state of affairs, and we are quite in sympathy with my brother-in-law’s attitude as to what should be done to you.

PIKE [in a tone of genial inquiry].  Yes, ma’am; and what do you think ought to be done to me?

LADY CREECH.  If, in the kindness of our hearts, we condone your offence, we insist upon your accession to our reasonable demands.

PIKE [sardonically].  By ten o’clock!

LADY CREECH.  Quite so.

PIKE.  You say he told all of you?  Has he told Miss Ethel?

LADY CREECH.  It hasn’t been thought proper.  Young girls should be shielded from everything disagreeable.

PIKE.  Yes, ma’am; that’s the idea that got me into this trouble.

LADY CREECH.  I say, this young lady, who seems to be technically your ward, is considered, by all of us who understand her, infinitely more my ward.

PIKE.  Yes, ma’am!  Go on.

LADY CREECH [loftily].  She came to me something more than a year ago—­

PIKE [simply].  Did you advertise?

LADY CREECH [stung].  I suppose it is your intention to be offensive.

PIKE [protesting].  No, ma’am; I didn’t mean anything.  But, you see,
I’ve handled all her accounts, and her payments to you—­

LADY CREECH [crushingly].  We will omit tradesman-like references!  What Lord Hawcastle wished me to impress on you is not only that you will ruin yourself, but put a blight upon the life of the young lady whom you are pleased to consider your ward.  We make this suggestion because we conceive that you have a preposterous sentimental interest yourself in Miss Granger-Simpson.

PIKE [taken aback].  Me?

LADY CREECH.  Upon what other ground are we to explain your conduct?

PIKE.  You mean that I’d only stand between her and you for my own sake?

LADY CREECH.  We can comprehend no other grounds.

PIKE [solemnly].  I don’t believe you can!  But you can comprehend that
I wouldn’t have any hope, can’t you?

LADY CREECH.  One never knows what these weird Americans hope.  Hawcastle assures me you have some such idea, but my charge has studied under my instruction—­deportment, manners, and ideals—­which has lifted her above the mere American circumstance of her birth.  She has ambitions.  If you stand in the way of them she will wither, she will die like a caged bird.  All that was sordid about her parentage she has cast off.  We have thought that we might make something out of her.