“Don’t look so guilty, Val. It isn’t a crime, and besides, no one will know.”
Val coloured in a childish way, and said to Quentillian:
“My father knows that I smoke—at least, I think he knows, in a sort of way. He doesn’t like it, and that’s why I don’t do it in front of him,” she concluded naïvely.
“You’re wrong, Val,” said Adrian. “You and Flossie ought to assert yourselves more. It would make it much easier for me, if you did. Father’s ideas about women are so old-fashioned, one can’t introduce him to any of one’s friends.”
Quentillian exchanged a glance with Valeria. It required small acumen to translate the plurality of Adrian’s “friends” into the singular, and the feminine singular at that.
“Father is very broad-minded,” said Valeria conscientiously. “He never says that smoking is wrong; only that it’s unfeminine.”
“It isn’t anything of the sort,” Adrian declared with the most astonishing violence. “Some people—girls—require it for their nerves. It soothes them. It doesn’t make them in the least unfeminine. I met a girl the other day—you’d have liked her awfully, Val—and she simply smoked perfectly naturally, the whole time, just like a man.”
“Who was she?” inquired Val smoothly.
“Let me see—what was her name now?”
This time Quentillian avoided Valeria’s eyes, positively abashed by the extreme hollowness of Adrian’s pretence at forgetfulness.