Cecilia remained calm. "I hope you don't loathe Mr. Flood," she said, "because he is."
Rosamund threw herself back in a deep chair, and looked at her sister in the exasperation one feels towards the sweetly stubborn.
"Oh, very well! He is! But that's nothing to me!"
"Isn't it? He probably thinks it is! You've taken his help for your precious Eleanor, you know, and you're going to Oakleigh next month."
"I am not going to do anything of the kind!"
That moved Cecilia. "But my dear child, you certainly are! He has asked me to be hostess for his first house-party, and I have accepted, and said you'd go with me."
"Cecilia!"
"Now don't say you've forgotten it! Why, it was the very day you told him about Eleanor."
Cecilia remained provokingly silent; and Rosamund jumped up impatiently, only to throw herself down upon another chair.
"Oh, I wish I had never seen the man!" she cried. "I did tell him about Eleanor, and I did let him do something for her. I would have taken help for Eleanor from anybody—from a street-sweeper, or the furnace man! That doesn't give your Mr. Flood any claim on me!"