"D'you want her to go?"
"I should have thought you did."
"Well—" He spoke awkwardly. "She's been there nearly all my life. You can't turn people off like that, but if you want it, she shall go."
"No, it's not my affair," she told him.
"It will be," he said sharply.
"Of course," she said in a high voice, "I should never dream of living in the same house with her, but then," she went on, and her tones loosened, there was an irritating kind of humour in them, "I don't suppose I shall ever live there at all."
She did not know why she spoke so; her wish to hurt him was hardly recognizable by herself, but when she saw him stung, she was delighted.
The colour rushed up to his eyes. "What d'you mean by that? What d'you think you're going to do?"
She raised her eyebrows, and answered lightly, "I'm sure I don't know."
He put a heavy hand on her knee. "But I do," he said, and her mouth drooped and quivered. She knew she had laid herself open to an attack she could not repel.