"I could indeed. I," with deep reproach, "would have told a dozen lies for you in a minute."
"Well, I don't want you to," says Miss Knollys. "By-the-bye, he is not going out of town, after all."
"No?" with studied indifference. "Then I suppose we may expect to hear that Mrs. Bethune will be in town shortly?"
"I really do think, Tita, that you ought to refrain from speeches like that. They are unworthy of you, and they are not true. Whatever infatuation Maurice felt for Marian Bethune in the past, lies in the past. Only to-day he told me——"
"Told you?"
Tita leans eagerly forward.
"That if he ever had loved her—and he seemed now to doubt that—he loved her no longer."
"Just shows how fickle he is," says Tita, with supreme scorn.
"Of course, if you are determined to misjudge him in every way——"
"It is he who misjudges me!" She gets up and walks impatiently from Margaret to the window and back again. "How could he say I deliberately deserted him?"