"Speak ill? Oh, he did not—and who has, indeed? Ill? What can you mean? I merely mentioned it as a funny, melodramatic sort of performance, just like a foolish little girl. Of course there was nothing really out of the way, only a bit of imprudence—and without a mother, or chaperone, what can one expect?"
"You speak of what I was about to mention; they have no mother. That is enough to make any older woman feel it her motherly duty to guard and counsel them, I'm sure," was the calm reply. "We all must agree on that."
"Yes, indeed!" ventured Mrs. Windemere in her small voice. "Poor young things."
"I don't think they seem to need your pity, mother!" cried Janet sharply, looking across at the merry group, in which were the Hosmer sisters. "Not in that way, at any rate."
"And," added Mrs. Campbell with an exaggerated drawl, "we who are not of an age to look upon them in a motherly light may not appreciate all those feelings. They amuse me, to be sure, but I had scarcely thought of adopting them."
"Nor their father, either?" put in the attaché clumsily, hoping to raise a laugh and dispel the thunder in the air. But he only drew the lightning upon himself. She gave him one look that silenced him, and, lifting the fan in her lap, said languidly,
"How very warm it is! Strange how little the most of us understand the necessity of fitting our conversation to the weather, if we would be agreeable. Discussions and personalities, if ever allowable, are only suited to a zero temperature. Have you noticed the flying-fish, this morning? How delightful it must be to plunge into that cool water to-day! I wonder if they fly out into the heat just for the fun of cooling off afterwards?"
"Quite a suggestion, Mrs. Campbell!" laughed the traveler. "I believe I'll try it," and, bowing lightly, with a flash of the eyes that met her own in quick defiance, he turned away.
As he passed around the bulkhead screening Lady Moreham, she rose and said in a low voice,
"I want to thank you! Many a life has been ruined by base insinuations. A vain woman's tongue is a merciless weapon. I like the little sisters, and believe them pure-hearted children. It was wicked!"