Lord Montague shook his head and screwed up his keen little eyes.  His mind was in full play.  “I know women, Mrs. Mavick, and I tell you there is something behind this.  Somebody has been in the stable.”  The noble lord usually dropped into slang when he was excited.

“I don’t understand your language,” said Mrs. Mavick, straightening herself up in her seat.

“I beg pardon.  It is just a way of speaking on the turf.  When a favorite goes lame the morning of the race, we know some one has been tampering with him.  I tell you there is some one else.  She has some one else in her mind.  That’s the reason of it.”

“Nonsense.” cried Mrs. Mavick, with the energy of conviction.  “It’s impossible.  There is nobody, couldn’t be anybody.  She has led a secluded life till this hour.  She hasn’t a fancy, I know.”

“I hope you are right,” he replied, in the tone of a man wishing to take a cheerful view.  “Perhaps I don’t understand American girls.”

“I think I do,” she said, smiling.  “They are generally amenable to reason.  Evelyn now has something definite before her.  I am glad you proposed.”

And this was the truth.  Mrs. Mavick was elated.  So far her scheme was completely successful.  As to Evelyn, she trusted to various influences she could bring to bear.  Ultimate disobedience of her own wishes she did not admit as a possible thing.

A part of her tactics was the pressure of public opinion, so far as society represents it—­that is, what society expects.  And therefore it happened in a few days that a strong suspicion got about that Lord Montague had proposed formally to the heiress.  The suspicion was strengthened by appearances.  Mrs. Mavick did not deny the rumor.  That there was an engagement was not affirmed, but that the honor had been or would be declined was hardly supposable.

In the painful interview between mother and daughter concerning this proposal, Evelyn had no reason to give for her opposition, except that she did not love him.  This point Mrs. Mavick skillfully evaded and minimized.  Of course she would love him in time.  The happiest marriages were founded on social fitness and the judgment of parents, and not on the inexperienced fancies of young girls.  And in this case things had gone too far to retreat.  Lord Montague’s attentions had been too open and undisguised.  He had been treated almost as a son by the house.  Society looked upon the affair as already settled.  Had Evelyn reflected on the mortification that would fall upon her mother if she persisted in her unreasonable attitude?  And Mrs. Mavick shed actual tears in thinking upon her own humiliation.

The ball which followed these private events was also a part of Mrs. Mavick’s superb tactics.  It would be in a way a verification of the public rumors and a definite form of pressure which public expectation would exercise upon the lonely girl.