"You don't see the occasion for candor, Sylvia? I do. You know just what you have tried to do this morning. There is no use of denying."
"Tried to do?" she repeated, raising her eyes.
"Yes," sped Mrs. Diggs, with a kind of snap in every word. "We've never liked each other, as I said, and I preluded my remarks with this statement because I want to show you why, from to-day henceforward, we are open foes. You would have had Claire Hollister's mother rush like a mad woman into that dining-room. You wanted it. You planned, you plotted it. There's no use of asserting that you didn't."
Mrs. Lee quietly threw back her head. "Oh, very well, since the poor woman," she began, "has really betrayed me, I"—
"Betrayed you?" broke in Mrs. Diggs. "She has done nothing of the sort. If you exacted any promise from her, I know nothing of that—nor does Claire. We both understood that you were behind the whole affair, and when Mrs. Twining was taxed with your complicity she did not presume to disavow it."
Mrs. Lee looked at her roses again, and touched some of their petals with a caressing hand.
"If you think me culpable to have told a poor wretch in a hospital the address of the daughter who had deserted her," she said, "I am only sorry that your code of morals should so materially differ from mine."
"Morals?" replied Mrs. Diggs, with a quick laugh that seemed to crackle. "It's amusing, truly, to hear such a word as that from you to me, Sylvia!"
Mrs. Lee again lifted her eyes. She was smiling, and her small, dark head, garnished with a tiny crimson bonnet, was set very much sideways. "My dear Kate," she said, "did it ever occur to you how enormously vulgar you can be at a pinch?"
"I'd answer that question if I didn't see through the trick of it. We're not talking of manners, if you please; we're talking of morals. Do you consider that there is anything moral in a mean, underhand revenge? That is exactly what you resorted to. To serve a spiteful hatred, you would have had Mrs. Twining dart like a Fury into yonder dining-room."