"You mean"—impatiently—"you would wish me to speak to no one except you. You don't take into account how slow this would be for me." She says this cruelly. "I care no more for Philip than I do for any other man."
"Just so. I am the other man, no doubt. I have never been blind to the fact that you do not care for me. Why take the trouble of acting a part any longer?"
"'Acting a part'! Nonsense!" says Molly. "I always think that the most absurd phrase in the world. Who does not act a part? The thing is to act a good one."
"Is yours a good part?" Bitterly.
"You are the best judge of that," returns she, haughtily. "If you do not think so, why keep to our engagement? If you wish to break it, you need fear no opposition from me." So saying, she sweeps past him and enters the house.
Yet in spite of her anger and offended pride, her eyes are wet and her hands trembling as she reaches Cecil's room and lays the snow-white flowers upon her table.
Cecil is still lying comfortably ensconced among her pillows, but has sufficient wakefulness about her to notice Molly's agitation.
"You have been quarreling, ma belle," she says, raising herself on her elbow; "don't deny it. Was it with Marcia or Tedcastle?"
"Tedcastle," Molly replies, laughing against her will at the other's shrewdness, and in consequence wiping away a few tears directly afterward. "It is nothing; but he is really intolerably jealous, and I can't and won't put up with it."
"Oh, that some one was jealous about me!" says Cecil, with a prolonged sigh. "Go on."