“My dear—­I——­”

“Ah, you make a bad liar, Meg!” says Tita; “you ought to throw up the appointment.  You aren’t earning your salary honestly.  And, besides, it doesn’t matter.  Even if he were dying to see me, I should still rather die than see him.”

“That is not a right spirit, to——­”

“I expect my spirit is as right as his,” says Tita rebelliously, “and,” with a sudden burst of indignation that does away with all sense of her duty to her language, “a thousand times righter for the matter of that.  No, Margaret!  No—­no—­no!  I will not see him.  Do you think I ever forget——­”

“I had hoped, dearest, that——­”

“It is useless to hope. What woman would forgive it?  I knew he married me without loving me.  That was all fair!  He told me that.  What he did not tell me was the vital thing—­that he loved someone else.”

“You should never have married him when he told you he did not love you.”

“Why not?” warmly.  “I knew nothing of love; I thought he knew nothing of it either.  Love seemed to me a stupid sort of thing (it seems so still).  I said to myself that a nice strong friendship would be sufficient for me——­”

“Well?”

“Well, so it would—­only he felt no friendship.  He felt nothing but his love for that odious woman!  I couldn’t stand that.”

“You stood it for a long time, Tita—­if it ever existed.”

“Yes; I know.  I didn’t seem to care much at first, but when he grew rude to me about Tom——­ Well, I knew what that meant.”

“If you knew, you should have kept your cousin at a greater distance.”

“Nonsense, Margaret! what do you mean by that?” Tita has turned a pair of lustrous eyes upon her—­eyes lit by the fire of battle—­not battle with Margaret, however, but with memory.  “You honestly think that he believed I was in love with Tom?”

“I do.  And I think he was jealous.”

Tita bursts out laughing.  There is little music in her mirth.

“And now I’ll tell you what I think.  That he was glad to pretend to believe I was in love with Tom, because he hoped to get rid of me, and after that to marry his cousin.”

“Tita!  I shall not listen to you if you say such things.  How dare you even think them?  Maurice is incapable of such a design.”

“In my opinion, he is capable of anything,” retorts Maurice’s wife, without a trace of repentance.  She looks long at Margaret, and then dropping gracefully upon a pouf at Margaret’s feet, says sweetly, “He’s a beast!”

“Oh, Tita!  I don’t know why I love you,” says Margaret, with terrible reproach.

At this Tita springs to her feet, and flings her arms round Miss Knollys.  Presently she leans back and looks at her again, still, however, holding her with her arms.  Her small face, so woeful a while ago, is now wreathed in smiles; it even suggests itself to Margaret that she is with difficulty suppressing a wild outbreak of mirth—­a suppression meant, no doubt, as a concession to Margaret’s feelings.