"So you'll go trapesing to America on Robert's heels, after all?" she said. "To dish his whole career!"
"Cornelia, you're a devil!" cried Janet, incandescent with anger. "I'd like to know the reason, the real reason for your anxiety to get me married to M. St. Hilaire. Not to do me a good turn, that's one sure thing."
Mazie advanced between them.
"Say, Janet," she called out, pacifico-satirically, "even the devil sometimes does a pal a good turn—just for a change."
Cornelia extinguished her with a gesture.
"Why did you ever run away with Claude," she said, turning to Janet again, "if you were so gone on Robert?"
"How was I to tell the difference between an infatuation that was bound to perish and a love that had scarcely been born?" replied Janet, once more her cool, keen self. "How was I to tell, until I had tried them out?"
"Tried them out! Words fail to describe your morals, Janet. But go on your own way rejoicing, my dear. Hang yourself around Robert's neck, if you like. You'll make a charming picture there, I'm sure. Of course, clinging vines have gone out of fashion. But clinging leeches are always with us."
Janet went out ignoring these insults and mutely denying Harry Kelly's passionate appeal to her not to mind what Cornelia was saying in a vertigo of rage.
"For God's sake, Cornelia," said Harry, making a frantic demonstration, "don't let her leave us like that."