This unexpected counter-stroke took him aback completely.
“I—er—I fail to apprehend your meaning,” he stammered.
“Oh, people are always ready to sneer at a girl, when a man’s attentions don’t come to marriage.”
He felt the red deepening in his face and said—the more awkwardly because he was trying to appear serene and dominant:
“You said nothing of this to me before.”
“No,” she answered, reflectively. “Then I could have sneered with the rest. I was getting to be like them.”
Feeling more at ease immediately, because she had abandoned the subject of Miss Crewe to speak of herself, he attempted a return to his former manner.
“The events of this evening have unstrung you.”
She leaped to her feet as if she were about to attack him.
“Unstrung!” she cried. “They’ve opened my eyes, and the thing I see most clearly is that I am nothing. Yes, nothing. A few hours ago I was a much-flattered hostess, the courted mistress of this house, the woman whose word was law in the fashions and entertainments of this community....”