“Then you can rest perfectly quiet, mamma.  I do know my own mind; and, what’s worse, I know Mr. Beaton’s mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he spoke to me the other night simply because Mr. Fulkerson’s engagement had broken him all up.”

“What expressions!” Mrs. Leighton lamented.

“He let it out himself,” Alma went on.  “And you wouldn’t have thought it was very flattering yourself.  When I’m made love to, after this, I prefer to be made love to in an off-year, when there isn’t another engaged couple anywhere about.”

“Did you tell him that, Alma?”

“Tell him that!  What do you mean, mamma?  I may be indelicate, but I’m not quite so indelicate as that.”

“I didn’t mean you were indelicate, really, Alma, but I wanted to warn you.  I think Mr. Beaton was very much in earnest.”

“Oh, so did he!”

“And you didn’t?”

“Oh yes, for the time being.  I suppose he’s very much in earnest with Miss Vance at times, and with Miss Dryfoos at others.  Sometimes he’s a painter, and sometimes he’s an architect, and sometimes he’s a sculptor.  He has too many gifts—­too many tastes.”

“And if Miss Vance and Miss Dryfoos—­”

“Oh, do say Sculpture and Architecture, mamma!  It’s getting so dreadfully personal!”

“Alma, you know that I only wish to get at your real feeling in the matter.”

“And you know that I don’t want to let you—­especially when I haven’t got any real feeling in the matter.  But I should think—­speaking in the abstract entirely—­that if either of those arts was ever going to be in earnest about him, it would want his exclusive devotion for a week at least.”

“I didn’t know,” said Mrs. Leighton, “that he was doing anything now at the others.  I thought he was entirely taken up with his work on ’Every Other Week.’”

“Oh, he is! he is!”

“And you certainly can’t say, my dear, that he hasn’t been very kind—­very useful to you, in that matter.”

“And so I ought to have said yes out of gratitude?  Thank you, mamma!  I didn’t know you held me so cheap.”

“You know whether I hold you cheap or not, Alma.  I don’t want you to cheapen yourself.  I don’t want you to trifle with any one.  I want you to be honest with yourself.”

“Well, come now, mamma!  Suppose you begin.  I’ve been perfectly honest with myself, and I’ve been honest with Mr. Beaton.  I don’t care for him, and I’ve told him I didn’t; so he may be supposed to know it.  If he comes here after this, he’ll come as a plain, unostentatious friend of the family, and it’s for you to say whether he shall come in that capacity or not.  I hope you won’t trifle with him, and let him get the notion that he’s coming on any other basis.”

Mrs. Leighton felt the comfort of the critical attitude far too keenly to abandon it for anything constructive.  She only said, “You know very well, Alma, that’s a matter I can have nothing to do with.”