Adele laughed in rather a forced way, and her eyes moved uneasily, glancing quickly in one direction and another.
"You would have been a dreadful person in those times, I am quite sure," she said. "You would have been a monster of cruelty."
"Of course I should. So should we all. But we manage those little things so easily now, and so much more tastefully."
"Exactly," said Adele, who saw her chance and an opportunity of turning the conversation at the same time. "I would like your views upon modern social warfare. If you wished to ruin your enemy, how would you go about it?"
"A man or a woman?" asked Ghisleri, calmly.
"Oh, both. A man first. It is always harder to injure a man than a woman, is it not?"
"So they say. Do you wish to kill the man or to ruin him altogether, or only to injure him in the eyes of the world?"
"Take the three in the other order," suggested Adele. "A mere injury first—and the rest afterwards."
"Very well. I have something very neat in the killing line—to use the shopkeeper style. I will keep it to the end. Let me see. You wish to do a man a great injury—enough, say, to make a woman who loves him turn upon him. Is that it?"
"Yes, that would do very well," said Adele, as though she were discussing the fashion of a new frock.