If Tita had grown red before, she is very white now.
"I am sure you are not aware of it," says she, setting her small teeth, but speaking quite calmly, "but you are very impertinent."
"I—I?" says Lady Rylton. In all her long, tyrannical life she has met with so few people to show her defiance, that now this girl's contemptuous reply daunts her. "You forget yourself," says she, with ill-suppressed fury.
"No, indeed," says Tita, "it is because I remember myself that I spoke like that. And I think it will save time," says she quietly, "and perhaps a good deal of temper too—mine," smiling coldly, "is not good, you know—if you understand at once that I shall not allow you to say insolent things like that to me."
"You allow me!" Tessie gets up from her chair and stares at her opponent, who remains seated, looking back at her. "I see you have made up your mind to ruin my son," says she, changing her tone to one of tearful indignation. "You accepted him, you married him, but you have never made even an effort to love him."
Here Tessie sinks back in her chair and covers her eyes with her handkerchief. This is her way of telling people she is crying; it saves the rouge and the powder, and leaves the eye-lashes as black as before.
"It is not always easy to love someone who is in love with someone else," says Tita.
"Someone else! What do you mean?"
"There is one fault, at all events, that you cannot find with me," says Tita; "I have not got a bad memory. As if it were only yesterday, I remember how you enlightened me about Maurice's affection"—she would have said "love," but somehow she cannot—"for—for Mrs. Bethune."
"Pouf!" says the dowager. "That! I don't see how that can influence your conduct. You married my son, and you ought to do your duty by him. As for Marian, if you had been a good wife you should have taught him to forget all that long ago. It seems you have not." She darts this barbed arrow with much joy, and watches for the pain it ought to have caused, but watches in vain. "The fact of your remembering it all this time only shows," says Tessie vindictively, angry at the failure of her dart, "what a malicious spirit you have. You are not only malicious, but silly! People of the world never remember unpleasant things."