"Of"—he began.
She smiled.
"Of me," she answered. "They were saying a great deal of me a week ago; tell me what they say now. You must hear in going your giddy rounds."
"You are very well treated," he replied. "There is a certain great lady who is most uncomfortably commented upon. I can scarcely imagine that she enjoys it."
Her smile ended in a fatigued sigh.
"The tide turned very quickly," she said. "It is well for me that it did. I should not have had much mercy if I had stood alone. Ah! it was a good thing for me that you were all so brave. You might have deserted me, too—it would have been very simple—and then—then the gates of paradise would have been shut against me."
"That figure of speech meaning—?" suggested Arbuthnot.
"That I should have been invited to no more dinner-parties and receptions; that nobody would have come up to my Thursday Evenings; that Miss Jessup would never again have mentioned me in the Wabash Gazette."
"That would have been very bitter," he answered.
"Yes," she returned, "it would have been bitter, indeed."