He tried to look into her face, but she only turned farther away from him.
“I’ve spent the most miserable week I ever knew, doomed to stay here, unable to get away to go to you, and with this fight on my hands!”
“You seemed to be having a fairly good time,” the girl said.
“Now, Amelia, look here,” said Vernon, “let’s not act like children any longer; let’s not have anything so foolish and little between us.”
His tone made his words a plea, but it plainly had no effect upon her, for she did not answer. They sat there, then, in silence.
“Why didn’t you write?” Vernon demanded after a little while. He looked at her, and she straightened up and her eyes flashed.
“Why didn’t I write!” she exclaimed. “What was I to write, pray? Were not your letters full of this odious Maria Burlaps Greene? And as if that were not enough, weren’t the papers full of you two? And that speech—oh, that speech—that Portia and Helen, and ‘I fill this cup to one made up,’ ah, it was sickening!” She flirted away again.
“But, darling,” Vernon cried, “listen—you misunderstood—I meant all that for you, didn’t you understand?”
She stirred.
“Didn’t you see? Why, dearest, I thought that when you read the papers you’d be the proudest girl alive!”