"But you do now?"
"Yes."
Adela hated the pregnant brevity of this affirmative.
"Mamma doesn't," laughed Marjory. "She's so angry with him carrying off Walter. As if it wasn't a grand thing for Walter! So she's quite turned round about him."
"He's not staying in—with you, I suppose?"
"Oh, no. Though I don't see why he shouldn't. Conventions are so stupid, aren't they? Mrs. Dennison's there," and Marjory looked up with an appeal to calm reason as personified in Adela.
At another time, nineteen's view of twenty-nine—Marjory's conception of Maggie Dennison as a sufficing chaperon—would have amused Adela. But she was past amusement. Her patience snapped, as it were, in two. She turned almost fiercely on her companion, forgetting all prudence in her irritation.
"For heaven's sake, child, what do you mean? Do you think he's coming to see you?"
Marjory drew her arm out from Adela's, and retreated a step from her.
"Adela! I never thought——" She did not end, conscious, perhaps, that her flushed face gave her words the lie. Adela swept on.