“No doubt you could, considering how much you had to do with them,” he said, with a laugh so self-assured that Miss Arbuthnot bit her lip.
“I?”
“Yes. She was jealous of you, and I can hardly blame her.”
“Oh, I don’t blame her at all.”
“Blame? No. Why, I bless her. She opened my eyes. A little longer, and it might have been too late.”
“Oh no. That misfortune,” said Miss Arbuthnot scornfully, “could never happen to you. A means of deliverance always offers itself in good time. And did she—Claudia, I mean—enjoy her mission?”
She had stung him at last, for he moved fretfully.
“You might understand that—that it was all painful, and I don’t want to talk about it. The point is—” he used Claudia’s words—“that it is over and done with.”
“Well, go on,” she said, opening and shutting her fan. “I understand that I am to keep my intelligence fixed on the fact that it is over and done with, and that Claudia’s feelings belong to a side issue with which one has nothing to do. Go on.”
This time he turned angrily upon her. “You speak as if I had done the girl an injury. Granted that I was a fool—a double-distilled fool—would it have been for her happiness to have persisted in the folly?”