"Mr. Lashmar!" cried Iris, almost tearfully. "This is dreadful. How could such a thought enter my mind? Is that your opinion of me?"
"Pray don't be absurd," interposed Dyce, with an impatient gesture. "I detest this shrillness, as I've told you fifty times."
Iris bridled a little.
"I'm sure I wasn't shrill. I spoke in a very ordinary voice. And I don't know why you should attribute such thoughts to me."
Lashmar gave way to nervous irritation.
"What a feminine way of talking! Is it impossible for you to follow a logical train of ideas? I attributed no thought whatever to you. All I said was, that I must take care not to be misunderstood. And I see that I had very good reason; you have a fatal facility in misconceiving even the simplest things."
Mrs. Woolstan bridled still more. There was a point of colour on her freckled cheeks, her lower lip showed a tooth's pressure.
"After all," she said, "you must remember that I am a woman, and if women don't express themselves quite as men do, I see no great harm in it. I don't think mannishness is a very nice quality. After all, I am myself, and I can't become somebody else, and certainly shouldn't care to, if I could."
Dyce began to laugh forbearingly.
"Come, come," he said, "what's all this wrangling about? How did it begin? That's the extraordinary thing with women; one gets so easily off the track, and runs one doesn't know where. What was I saying? Oh, simply that I couldn't be sure, yet, whether Hollingford would suit me. Let us keep to the higher plane. It's safer than too familiar detail."