"Nothing—?" faltered Mrs. Clinch, longing for another tea-cake, but feeling the inappropriateness of the impulse in an atmosphere so charged with the portentous. "Do you mean that everything has been said?" She looked tentatively at her cousin. "Haven't they been nice?"
"They've been odious—odious—" Mrs. Fetherel burst out, with an ineffectual clutch at her handkerchief. "It's been perfectly intolerable!"
Mrs. Clinch, philosophically resigning herself to the propriety of taking no more tea, crossed over to her cousin and laid a sympathizing hand on that lady's agitated shoulder.
"It is a bore at first," she conceded; "but you'll be surprised to see how soon one gets used to it."
"I shall—never—get—used to it—" Mrs. Fetherel brokenly declared.
"Have they been so very nasty—all of them?"
"Every one of them!" the novelist sobbed.
"I'm so sorry, dear; it does hurt, I know—but hadn't you rather expected it?"
"Expected it?" cried Mrs. Fetherel, sitting up.
Mrs. Clinch felt her way warily. "I only mean, dear, that I fancied from what you said before the book came out—that you rather expected—that you'd rather discounted—"