‘You called her a cousin, I remember.’
‘There is some cousinship between us; I forget exactly in what degree.’
‘Do try and remember a little more; remember that you forgot you had engaged me for the cotillon, and drove away with that blonde beauty—and she was a beauty, or had been a few years before—at all events, you lost all memory of the daughter of the adventurer.’
‘You will drive me distracted, Nina, if you say such things.’
‘I know it is wrong and it is cruel, and it is worse than wrong and cruel, it is what you English call underbred, to be so individually disagreeable, but this grievance of mine has been weighing very heavily on my heart, and I have been longing to tell you so.’
‘Why are you not singing, Nina?’ cried Kate from the terrace. ‘You told me of a duet, and I think you are bent on having it without music.’
‘Yes, we are quarrelling fiercely,’ said Nina. ‘This gentleman has been rash enough to remind me of an unsettled score between us, and as he is the defaulter—’
‘I dispute the debt.’
‘Shall I be the judge between you?’ asked Kate.
‘On no account; my claim once disputed, I surrender it,’ said Nina.