"Vanda!" protested the Countess.
"A pretext," she repeated firmly. "Look at him! Look how nervous and insincere he has been all the evening! Do you know why, Aunt Natalie? I will tell you. Because he is the dog in the manger."
"Vanda!" repeated her horrified aunt.
None of them had thought the girl capable of such words. For a moment she looked the incarnation of passion.
"Let him deny it!" she retorted.
He looked up, his face flushed; but he was less nervous than a few minutes earlier.
She turned to her aunt.
"You see," she said. "He says nothing. He can't deny it."
"I don't wish to," he said quietly.
Minnie knew she ought to have tiptoed from the room. But the scene held her. It was not the novelty of seeing Vanda in a rage, nor the novelty of hearing Ian's avowal of love. It was because she felt her own sentence lay in their hot words.