"I suppose you won't tell me everything?" said Nina, after a pause.
"What everything?"
"You won't be angry if I ask?"
"No, I will not be angry."
"I suppose there is someone else you really care for?"
"There is no one," said Ayala, escaping a little from her friend's embrace.
"Then why should you be so determined against that poor young man?"
"Because he is a lout and a beast," said Ayala, jumping up. "I wonder you should ask me;—as if that had anything to do with it. Would you fall in love with a lout because you had no one else? I would rather live for ever all alone, even in Kingsbury Crescent, than have to think of becoming the wife of my cousin Tom." At this Nina shrugged her shoulders, showing that her education in Italy had been less romantic than that accorded to Ayala in London.