“You think it would have been more pardonable if I had done it secretly?” I was driven to saying. She glared at me with the utmost fury.
“You can’t jest it away, so don’t mislead yourself. You are done for forever in Mashonaland.”
“I’m frightfully sorry for your poor sister-in-law,” Mrs Skeffington-Smythe chimed in pleasantly from her seat on the sofa. “She is so peculiarly sensitive about scandal.”
Annabel Cleeve now contributed her little damnatory verse to the commination service.
“It must be admitted that we live in a free and easy fashion up here: but neither the manners or morals of the Quartier Latin are ever likely to become popular.”
I surveyed them with such calmness as I could for the moment command, this three-cornered attack being quite unexpected.
“You are all exceedingly kind and charitable,” I said, “and your solicitude for my reputation is quite touching—”
“Don’t talk of what you have not,” broke in Mrs Valetta vindictively. “If you ever had a reputation it is gone. You can’t kiss Tony Kinsella with impunity.”
“I never do anything with impunity,” I said with burning cheeks but making a great effort to control my anger. “I kissed Anthony Kinsella as any girl may kiss the man she is going to many.”
Anna Cleeve gasped as though she had received a blow, then she laughed and Mrs Valetta joined her, but their laughter made a jarring and unlovely jangle.