"I wish I were. You shouldn't believe in people, Louise. I came round because—yes, you were a lonely scrap of a schoolgirl, certainly—but there were lots of other reasons. I wanted a walk and I wanted to be amused, and I wanted—and I wanted——" she moved restlessly in her chair, "All pure egoism, anyhow."
"But you came," said Louise.
"To please you, or to punish some one else? I don't know!"
Louise enjoyed her incomprehensibility. She stored up her remarks to puzzle over later. Yet she would ask questions if Miss Hartill were in a talking mood.
"Do I know them?" (She had an odd habit of using the plural when she wished to be discreet.) She wondered who had been punished, and why, and thrilled deliciously, as she did to a ghost story. She thought that it would be terrible to have offended Miss Hartill: yet immensely exciting.... She wondered if all her courage would go if Miss Hartill were angry? She had always despised poor Jeanne du Barrie: but Miss Hartill raging would be harder to face than a mob....
"What have they done?" asked Louise eagerly.
"They? It's your dear Miss Durand," said Clare, with a grim smile. "I'm very angry with her, Louise. She's been behaving badly."
Louise's eyes widened: she looked alarmed and distressed.
"Oh, but Miss Hartill—she hasn't! She couldn't! What has she done?"
"Shall I tell you?" Clare leaned forward mysteriously.