"Exactly. That is why I did not think it necessary you should know of Mrs. Carson's presence here," exclaimed Aldean, smoothly.
"Mrs. Carson!" sneered Clara, with a contemptuous laugh. "Oh yes; Mrs. Carson, of course."
Olive looked at the woman with a flush of anger. "No insolence, if you please," she said. "And you!" turning on her shrinking husband--"who and what are you, pray?"
"Carlo Boldini," he replied almost inaudibly.
"Are you an Italian?"
"My father was. He married an Englishwoman."
"So I am Signora Boldini?" said Olive, bitterly.
Clara laughed again. "Oh yes! Signora Boldini," she repeated, seating herself complacently beside her companion.
The two sat there like prisoners in the dock. Aldean began to feel positively judicial. The woman was horribly insolent.
"I would suggest, for your own sake, that you endeavour to restrain yourself," he said, moving to the end of the room in search of pen and ink. "You are in quite enough trouble as it is."