"Oh, 'Duke, do not be too hard on me. I did not mean to make you so very angry. I did not think there was any harm in what I did."
"No harm? No harm in flirting so outrageously as to bring down upon you the censure of all your guests? No harm in making yourself the subject of light gossip? Do you know that ever since last night, when you chose to disgrace both yourself and me by your conduct, I have felt half maddened. Angry. The word does not express what I feel. A hundred times during these past few hours I have with the utmost difficulty restrained myself."
"I don't see that I have done anything so very terrible; I have not behaved worse than—than others I could name, I don't believe anybody noticed me," I reply, miserably, and most untruthfully.
"Pshaw! How blind you must think people! Do you suppose they will not comment freely on your going to that low place with Gore, at nine o'clock at night, alone. I own my belief in their dulness or good-nature is not as comfortable a one as yours. Blanche Going, at all events, spoke to me openly about it."
I instantly take fire.
"No doubt," I cry, with passion. "Lady Blanche Going has her own reasons for wishing to degrade me in my husband's sight. She is a wicked woman! Were I to do half what she has done, and is capable of doing, I would be ashamed to look you in the face. I hate her! If you believe what she says, rather than what I say, of course there is little use in my speaking further in my own defense."
"I believe only what I see," returns my husband, significantly; "and that—I regret to say of you, Phyllis—is more than I can think of with calmness."
He turns from me as he speaks, and begins to pace excitedly up and down the room, a frown born of much anger upon his forehead.
"To think you should have chosen that fellow, who has hardly a shred of character left, as your friend."
It would be impossible to put on paper the amount of scorn he throws into the last word.