"That! That was a mere opportunity. Didn't you feel and see that it was!"
Jack's aspect now took on its air of serious and reasonable demonstration.
"Well, you know, Imogen, you were a little tactless about her friendship—about this Sir Basil."
He expected wonder and denial, but, on the contrary, after going to the window and looking out silently for some moments, Imogen, without turning, said, "It's not a friendship I care about."
"Why not?" Jack asked, taken aback.
"I don't like it," Imogen repeated.
"Why under the sun should you dislike it? What do you know about it, anyway?"
Imogen still gazed from the window. "Jack, I don't believe that mama is at all the woman to have friends, as we understand the word. I don't believe that it is simply a friendship. Yes, you may well look surprised,"—she had turned to him now—"I've never told you. It seemed unfair to her. But again and again I've caught her whispers, hints, about the sentimental attachments mama inspires. You may imagine how I've felt, living here with him, in his loneliness. I don't say, I don't believe, that mama was ever a flirt; she is too dignified, too distinguished a woman for that; but the fact remains that whispers of this sort do attach themselves to her name, and a woman is always to blame, in some sense, for that."
Jack, looking as startled as she had hoped he would, gazed now with frowning intentness on the ground and made no reply.
"As for this Sir Basil," Imogen went on, "I used to wonder if he were another of these triflers with the sanctity of love, and of late I've wondered more. He writes to her constantly. What can the bond between mama and a man of that type be unless it's a sentimental one? And didn't you see her blush to-day?"