“I think I can guess it,” said Bella, looking up in her face.
“No, you cannot,—you are not within a thousand miles of it. I know perfectly what you mean, Bella; you suspect that I have opened a flirtation with the distinguished Londoner, the wonderful Skeffington Darner.”
Bella shook her head dissentingly.
“Not but one might,” continued Alice, laughing, “in a dull season, with an empty house and nothing to do; just as I 've seen you trying to play that twankling old harpsichord in the Flemish drawing-room, for want of better; but you are wrong, for all that.”
“It was not of him I was thinking, Alice,—on my word, it was not. I had another, and, I suppose, a very different person in my head.”
“Tony!”
“Just so.”
“Well, what of him; and what the indiscretion with which you would charge me?”
“With which you charge yourself, Alice dearest! I see it all in that pink spot on your cheek, in that trembling of your lips, and in that quick impatience of your manner.”
“Dear me! what can it be which has occasioned such agitation, and called up such terrible witnesses against me?”