"I don't think I understand you," she says, at length, gravely. "Where would the rest of her be, if she wasn't all in the same place?"
She says this in such perfect good faith that Mr. Rodney roars with laughter.
"Perhaps you may not know it," says he, "but you are simply perfection!"
"So Mr. Moore says," returns she, smiling.
Had she put out all her powers of invention with a view to routing him with slaughter, she could not have been more successful than she is with this small unpremeditated speech. Had a thunderbolt fallen at his feet, he could not have betrayed more thorough and complete discomfiture.
He drops her arm, and looks as though he is prepared to drop her acquaintance also, at a moment's notice.
"What has Mr. Moore to do with you?" he asks, haughtily. "Who is he, that he should so speak to you?"
"He is our landlord," says Mona, calmly, but with uplifted brows, stopping short in the middle of the road to regard him with astonishment.
"And thinks you perfection?" in an impossible tone, losing both his head and his temper completely. "He is rich, I suppose; why don't you marry him?"
Mona turns pale.