“I suppose it would be nearer the mark to say, since you began by being so plain-spoken, that you came here to ask me to give you my husband,” I retorted as quietly as I could, not because I preferred the soft pedal, but because I nursed a strong suspicion that Struthers’ attentive ear was just below the nearest window-sill.
Lady Alicia smiled forbearingly, almost pityingly.
“Any such donation, I’m afraid, is no longer your prerogative,” she languidly remarked, once more mistress of herself. “What I’m more interested in is your giving your husband his liberty.”
I felt like saying that this was precisely what I had been giving him. But it left too wide an opening. So I ventured, instead: “I’ve never heard my husband express a desire for his liberty.”
“He’s too honorable for that,” remarked my enemy.
“Then it’s an odd kind of honor,” I icily remarked, “that allows you to come here and bicker over a situation that is so distinctly personal.”
“Pardon me, but I’m not bickering. And I’m not rising to any heights of courage which would be impossible to your husband. It’s consoling, however, to know how matters stand. And Duncan will probably act according to his own inclinations.”
That declaration would have been more inflammatory, I think, if one small truth hadn’t gradually come home to me. In some way, and for some reason, Lady Alicia Elizabeth Newland was not so sure of herself as she was pretending to be. She was not so sure of her position, I began to see, or she would never have thrown restraint to the winds and come to me on any such mission.
“Then that counts me out!” I remarked, with a forlorn attempt at being facetious. “If he’s going to do as he likes, I don’t see that you or I have much to say in the matter. But before he does finally place his happiness in your hands, I rather think I’d like to have a talk with him.”
“That remains with Duncan, of course,” she admitted, in a strictly qualified tone of triumph, as though she were secretly worrying over a conquest too incredibly facile.