“Both of them?”
“Both.”
“How comes that?—on what grounds?”
“The papers accused you of cruelty; they affirmed that there was no cause for the measures of severity you adopted; and they argued—”
“Don't bore me with all that balderdash. I asked you how was it that these women assumed I was in the wrong?”
“And I was about to tell you, if you had not interrupted me.”
“That is, they believed what they read in the newspapers?”
“Yes.”
“And, of course, swallowed that fine story about the Hindoo fellow that I first cut down, and afterwards bribed to make his escape from the hospital?”
“I suspect they half believed it.”