"You mean you think he didn't make her go?"
"I know he didn't. I'm perfectly positive."
"You can't believe that Angelica really knew Letty was so ill?" her tone was frankly incredulous.
"Of course I can't answer that. I don't know anything about what she thought; but I am certain that if she didn't understand, it wasn't Mr. Blackburn's fault." Afterwards, when she recalled it, her indignant defence of David Blackburn amused her. Why should she care what people said of him?
"But they say she didn't know. Mrs. Mallow told me she heard from someone who was there that Angelica turned on her husband when she came in and asked him why he had kept it from her?"
The hopelessness of her cause aroused Caroline's fighting blood, and she remembered that her father used to say the best battles of the war were fought after defeat. Strange how often his philosophy and experience of life came back to inspirit her!
"Well, perhaps she didn't understand, but Mr. Blackburn wasn't to blame. I am sure of it," she answered firmly.
Mrs. Colfax looked at her sharply. "Do you like David Blackburn?" she inquired without malice.
Caroline flushed. "I neither like nor dislike him," she retorted courageously, and wondered how long it would take the remark to circulate over Richmond. Mrs. Colfax was pretty, amiable, and amusing; but she was one of those light and restless women, as clear as running water, on whose sparkling memories scandals float like straws. Nothing ever sank to the depths—or perhaps there were no depths in the luminous shoals of her nature.
"Well, the reason I asked," Daisy had become ingratiating, "is that you talk exactly like Cousin Matty."