“How dare you!” she exclaimed in a furious undertone. “How dare you insult me!”
“I mentioned no names,” he replied in his coolest manner; “you asked for a toast, and I gave the first that came into my head.”
Mrs. Potter listened to his lame explanation with an expression of concentrated ferocity, then hastily collecting her party she turned her back upon him and left the supper-room in what was a most realistic presentment of high dudgeon!
“I could not help overhearing your toast,” I said as soon as I had recovered my partner.
“I suppose not. Now, thank goodness, we shall have elbow room. May I get you some quails in aspic?”
“No, thank you,” I replied, “I’ve had soup, and I never eat at a ball. I believe you have driven Mrs. Potter away, and made her your enemy for life.”
“She was always that,” he answered with amazing nonchalance; “she knows me, and I know her. She cannot spare infants in arms or even the dead. What a tongue! Mrs. Potter does not leave a feather on any woman in the station. In the good old days she would have found herself sitting in the public stocks.”
“Who is she so particularly down on this evening—a friend of yours, I imagine?”
“Yes, if you will allow me to call you so.”
“So then she was talking of me!”