“I hated it!” I cried defensively.
He varied the form, not the question.
“It, or the circumstances?”
“Oh! Anything you like.”
“But which?” he persisted. “There’s a world of difference between the two. If you please, Miss Trant—”
(How dared he use that authoritative tone for which I detested and adored him so!)
—“I want to know which it was?”
“Do you think I would stay”—I tried to fence—“after being treated like that? It was”—I groped for a strong enough word—“infamous of you, Mr. Waters!”
“Of me?” he said. “It would have been equally so of any man?”
“Far worse of you!” I blurted out before I could recall it.