"No. I want impressions, not reflections. Is it all very much changed?"
"I am very much changed," was the reply.
"And we?" said Bertha. "Suppose—suppose you begin with Laurence Arbuthnot."
"I do not think I could. He is not one of the persons I have remembered."
"Agnes," said Bertha, "only wait with patience for one of those occasions when you feel it necessary to efface him, and then tell him that, in exactly that tone of voice, and he will in that instant secretly atone for the crimes of a lifetime. He won't wince, and he will probably reply in the most brilliant and impersonal manner; but, figuratively speaking, you will have reduced him to powder and cast him to the breeze."
"We shall not be sufficiently intimate to render such a thing possible," said Mrs. Sylvestre. "One must be intimate with a man to be angry enough with him to wish to avenge one's self."
Bertha smiled.
"You don't like him," she said. "Poor Larry!"
"On the contrary," was her friend's reply. "But it would not occur to me to 'begin with him,' as you suggested just now."
"With whom, then," said Bertha, "would you begin."