"Oh, nonsense!" She did not disguise her impatience. "She's told him, has she?"
"I don't think you've treated me quite fairly."
The sun began to sink below the promontory which bounded the view on the right. The growing sombreness of the atmosphere seemed to spread over Mrs. Lenoir's face. Her voice was hard too, when she spoke.
"I've treated you absolutely fairly. You men always want to play with your cards held up, and ours down on the table. That's the masculine idea of an even game! Oh, I know it! For my part I think she's silly to have told him so soon. I wouldn't have. And so she's not good enough for him, isn't she?"
Mrs. Lenoir had certainly done well to whip up her anger. It enabled her to deliver the assault, and forestall the General's more deliberate offensive movement. Also by her plainness she exposed ruthlessly her friend's tactful invention of a letter from London making it advisable for him and his son to take the next boat back to England.
"It's not quite a question of that," said the General, his pale-brown old cheek flushing under the roughness of her scornful words. "You know how much I like her, and how much Bertie likes her too. But we must look facts in the face—take things as they are, Clara. It's not so much a matter of his own feelings. There's the regiment."
Mrs. Lenoir grew more annoyed—because she perceived in a flash that, old student of men as she was, she had neglected an important factor in the case. Being annoyed, and being a woman, she hit out at the other women who, as she supposed, stood in her way.
"A parcel of nobodies, in a garrison or cantonment somewhere!" Whatever the judgment on her life, she was always conscious that she herself had been famous.
"I suppose you're referring to the women? I wasn't thinking so much of them. It'd be sure to get out, and it wouldn't do with the youngsters."
She turned to him almost fiercely, but his next words struck a new note.