“Yes, girls like me; or sufficiently like me. And so I had—in sheer self-respect—to let Lady Rideover see that there was nothing in it of the kind of thing she thought, and that I was actually going home to be—”
“But didn’t she see? Didn’t she know? Didn’t everybody see? Didn’t everybody know?”
In the two brief sentences that came out with something like a groan she threw tremendous emphasis on the first word.
“Nobody knew! Nobody saw!”
There was a similar emphasis on the penultimate word in my response.
“Did you ask them?”
She flashed back at me: “I did—almost. At times like that—if it’s so—some one generally knows it from—from the person who’s expecting to be brimming over with his secret.” She laughed again, lightly, nervously. “But in this instance nobody did.”
“You asked them?”
“Practically. I forgot everything I used to consider pride and—and I sounded them.”