“Barbara, please! You’re talking about a friend of mine, one of my colleagues. Let’s return to—I hope you won’t find the French phrase invidious—to our mutton.”
“Oh, very well! Rash found the girl homeless—penniless—with no friends. Her stepfather had turned her out. Another man would have left her there, or turned her over to the police. Rash took her to his own house, and since then we’ve both been helping her to—to get on her feet.”
“Helping her to get on her feet in a way that’s driven from the house the good old women who’ve been there for nearly thirty years.”
“Oh, you know that too, do you?”
“Why, certainly. Jane, that was the parlor maid, is very intimate with Augusta Chancellor’s cook; and she says—Jane does—that he’s actually married the creature.”
Barbara shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t help what the servants say, Aunt Marion. I’m trying to be a friend to the girl, and help her to pull herself together. Of course I recognize the fact that Rash has been foolish—quixotic—or whatever you like to call it; but he hasn’t kept anything from me.”
“And you’re still engaged to him?”
“Of course I’m still engaged to him.” She held out her left hand. “Look at his ring.”
“Then why don’t you get married?”
“Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?”