“About what?” asks she promptly.

“About many things.”  Perhaps the girl’s bluntness has daunted her a little, because, as she says this, she moves uneasily, and finally changes her seat for a low lounge that brings the light on the back of her head.  “I am sorry to say I have heard several unpleasant things about you of late.”

Tita stares at her.

“I don’t understand you,” says she.

“Then it must be my unhappy task to have to explain myself,” says Tessie, who has now recovered herself, and is beginning to revel in the situation.  The merriest game of all, to some people, is that of hurting the feelings of others.  “For one thing, I am grieved to hear that you have made my son far from happy in his married life.”

A quick red dyes Tita’s face.  It lasts for a moment only.  She controls herself admirably, and, going to a chair, pulls it a little forward in a perfectly self-possessed fashion, pausing a little over the exact position of it, after which she seats herself amongst the cushions.

“Has Maurice told you that?” asks she.

“Maurice? No!" haughtily.  “In our set husbands do not complain of their wives.”

“No?” says Tita.  She looks amused.  “Then who else could it be in ‘our set’ who has said nasty little things about me?  Mrs. Bethune?”

“All this is beside the question,” says the dowager, with a wave of her hand.  “There is something else I must speak of—­painful though it is to me!” She unfurls the everlasting fan, and wafts it delicately to and fro, as if to blow away from her the hideous aroma of the thing she is forced to say.  “I hear you have established a—­er—­a far too friendly relationship with a—­er—­a cousin of your own.”

If Tita had grown red before, she is very white now.

“I am sure you are not aware of it,” says she, setting her small teeth, but speaking quite calmly, “but you are very impertinent.”

“I—­I?" says Lady Rylton.  In all her long, tyrannical life she has met with so few people to show her defiance, that now this girl’s contemptuous reply daunts her.  “You forget yourself,” says she, with ill-suppressed fury.

“No, indeed,” says Tita, “it is because I remember myself that I spoke like that.  And I think it will save time,” says she quietly, “and perhaps a good deal of temper too—­mine,” smiling coldly, “is not good, you know—­if you understand at once that I shall not allow you to say insolent things like that to me.”

_ “You_ allow me!" Tessie gets up from her chair and stares at her opponent, who remains seated, looking back at her.  “I see you have made up your mind to ruin my son,” says she, changing her tone to one of tearful indignation.  “You accepted him, you married him, but you have never made even an effort to love him.”

Here Tessie sinks back in her chair and covers her eyes with her handkerchief.  This is her way of telling people she is crying; it saves the rouge and the powder, and leaves the eye-lashes as black as before.