“You’ve stepped down two or three rungs, and if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself at the foot—”
“What do you mean?” screamed Lady Barnstaple. “I’ve half a mind to throw this teacup at you.”
“Don’t you dare to throw anything at me. I should have a right to speak even if I did not consider your own interest—which I do; please believe me. Surely you must know that Mr. Pix has hurt you.”
“I’d like to know why I can’t have a lover as well as anybody else.”
“Do you mean to acknowledge that he is your lover?”
“It’s none of your business whether he is or not! And I’m not going to be dictated to by you or anybody else.”
Lady Barnstaple was too nervous and too angry to be cowed by the cold blue blaze before her, but she asserted herself the more defiantly.
“I have no intention of dictating to you, but it certainly is my business. And it’s Lord Barnstaple’s and Cecil’s—”
“You shut up your mouth,” screamed Lady Barnstaple; her language always revealed its pristine simplicity when her nerves were fairly galloping. “The idea of a brat like you sitting up there and lecturing me. And what do you know about it, I’d like to know? You’re married to the salt of the earth and you’re such a fool you’re tired of him already. If you’d been tied up for twenty years to a cold-blooded brute like Barnstaple you might—yes, you might have a little more charity——”
“I am by no means without charity, and I know that you are not happy. I wish you were; but surely there are better ways of consoling oneself——”