Meynell want me to do? I believe I'm not obliged.
Anyway, I don't quite see how you're going to make me do it, if I don't
want to."
"You can behave like a naughty, troublesome girl, without any proper
feeling, of course!--if you choose," said Lady Fox-Wilton warmly. "But I
trust you will do nothing of the kind. We are your guardians till you are
twenty-one; and you ought to be guided by us."
"Well, of course I can't be engaged to Stephen, if you say I
mayn't--because there's Stephen to back you up. But if Queen Victoria
could be a queen at eighteen, I don't see why _I_ shouldn't be fit at
eighteen to manage my own wretched affairs! Anyway--I--am--not--going to
Paris--unless I want to go. So I don't advise you to promise that lady
just yet. If she keeps her room empty, you might have to pay for it!"
"Hester, you are really the plague of my life!" cried Lady Fox-Wilton
helplessly. "I try to keep you--the Rector tries to keep you--out of
mischief that any girl ought to be ashamed--of--and--"
"What mischief?" demanded Hester peremptorily. "Don't run into
generalities, mamma."
"You know very well what mischief I mean!"
"I know that you think I shall be running away some day with Sir Philip
Meryon!" said the girl, laughing, but with a fierce gleam in her eyes. "I
have no intention at present of doing anything of the kind.
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