"He was here with you a moment ago."
Joan answered quietly and quite distinctly:
"I wish he were dead!"
Stella Croyle fell back upon her first declaration.
"You must leave my Wub alone."
Joan laughed aloud, harshly and without any merriment. She checked herself with an effort lest she should go on laughing, and her laughter turn uncontrollably into hysteria and tears. Here was Mrs. Croyle, a grown woman, standing in front of her like a mutinous obstinate child, looking like one too, talking like one and bidding Joan leave her Wub alone. Whence did she get that ridiculous name? It was all degrading and grotesque.
"Your Wub! Your Wub!" she cried in a heat. "Yes, I am only twenty, and probably I am quite wrong and stupid. But it seems to me horrible that we two women should be wrangling over a man neither of us had met a week ago. I'll have no more of it."
She flung towards the window, but Stella Croyle cried out, "A week ago!" and the cry brought her to a stop. Joan turned and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Croyle. After all, that ridiculous label had not been pasted on to Harry Luttrell as a result of a week's acquaintance. Harry Luttrell had certainly talked to Stella through the greater part of an evening, his first evening in the house, but they had hardly been together at all since then. Joan came back slowly into the room.
"So you knew Colonel Luttrell before this week?"
"We were great friends a few years ago."