’Because, if you really are in love with him, Gertie; and that he likes you; and that, in short—­’ Aunt Becky was speaking very rapidly, but stopped suddenly.

‘In love with Lieutenant Puddock!’ was all that Miss Gertrude said.

’Now, do tell me, Gertrude, if it be so—­tell me, dear love.  I know ‘tis a hard thing to say,’ and Aunt Becky considerately began to fiddle with the ribbon at the back of her niece’s nightcap, so that she need not look in her face; ’but, Gertie, tell me truly, do you like him; and—­and—­why, if it be so, I will mention Mr. Dangerfield’s suit no more.  There now—­there’s all I want to say.’

‘Lieutenant Puddock!’ repeated young Madam in the nightcap; and by this time the film of slumber was gone; and the suspicion struck her somehow in altogether so comical a way that she could not help laughing in her aunt’s sad, earnest face.

’Fat, funny little Lieutenant Puddock!—­was ever so diverting a disgrace?  Oh! dear aunt, what have I done to deserve so prodigious a suspicion?’

It was plain, from her heightened colour, that her aunt did not choose to be laughed at.

‘What have you done?’ said she, quite briskly; ’why—­what have you done?’ and Aunt Becky had to consider just for a second or two, staring straight at the young lady through the crimson damask curtains.  ’You have—­you—­you—­why, what have you done? and she covered her confusion by stooping down to adjust the heel of her slipper.

‘Oh! it’s delightful—­plump little Lieutenant Puddock!’ and the graver her aunt looked the more irrepressibly she laughed; till that lady, evidently much offended, took the young gentlewoman pretty roundly to task.

‘Well!  I’ll tell you what you have done,’ said she, almost fiercely.  ’As absurd as he is, you have been twice as sweet upon him as he upon you; and you have done your endeavour to fill his brain with the notion that you are in love with him, young lady; and if you’re not, you have acted, I promise you, a most unscrupulous and unpardonable part by a most honourable and well-bred gentleman—­for that character I believe he bears.  Yes—­you may laugh, Madam, how you please; but he’s allowed, I say, to be as honest, as true, as fine a gentleman as—­as—­’

‘As ever surprised a weaver,’ said the young lady, laughing till she almost cried.  In fact, she was showing in a new light, and becoming quite a funny character upon this theme.  And, indeed, this sort of convulsion of laughing seemed so unaccountable on natural grounds to Aunt Rebecca, that her irritation subsided into perplexity, and she began to suspect that her extravagant merriment might mean possibly something which she did not quite understand.

’Well, niece, when you have quite done laughing at nothing, you will, perhaps, be so good as to hear me.  I put it to you now, young lady, as your relation and your friend, once for all, upon your sacred honour—­remember you’re a Chattesworth—­upon the honour of a Chattesworth’ (a favourite family form of adjuration on serious occasions with Aunt Rebecca), ‘do you like Lieutenant Puddock?’