"Why is she odious?"
"Because she is." She dropped for a second into the tone of the early friendly days in Halifax. "My dear, she was a shop-girl—or worse. I've forgotten what she was, but it was awful, and I don't mean to meet her."
I began to write the refusal.
"She goes about with very good people, doesn't she?"
"She doesn't go about with me, nor with some others I know, I can tell you that. If she did it would queer us."
In the hope of drawing out some such repudiation as that which I felt myself, I said, dryly: "Hugh tells me that if I married him I could be as good as she is—by this time next year."
I got nothing for my pains.
"That wouldn't help you much—not among the people who count."
There was white anger underneath my meekness.
"But perhaps I could get along with the people who don't count."