"You don't like Mrs. Hunter, but does that justify you in saying what you have? You can't mean that she would be—jealous?"
"That's exactly what I do mean."
He saw the angry color mantle in the face of the girl, and raised his hand in expostulation.
"Wait a little; I want to explain. First of all, she wouldn't have the slightest cause for jealousy. You're not the kind to give her one, and Elcot Hunter is one of the best and straightest men I know. In fact, that's partly what is troubling me."
"Why should it trouble you?" Alison interrupted.
Thorne appeared to reflect, and, indignant with his presumption as she was, the girl admitted that he did it very well.
"If you urge me for a precise answer, I'm afraid I'll have to confess that I don't quite know. Anyway, because Hunter is the sort of man I have described, he'd try to make things pleasant for you, and there's no doubt that his wife would resent it. Whether she's fond of him at all, or not, I naturally can't say, but she expects him to be entirely at her beck and call, and I don't think she'd tolerate any little courtesies he might show you."
Alison sat silent for a moment or two when he stopped, looking at him with perplexed eyes, though she felt that he was right.
"It's curious, isn't it?" she said at length. "Florence must have had a very unpleasant time in England, where she had to practise the strictest self-denial. One would have thought it would have made her content and compassionate now that she has everything that she could wish for."
"No," responded Thorne, "in a way, it's natural. That kind of life often has the opposite effect. Those who lead it have so much to put up with that if once they escape it makes them determined never even to contemplate doing the least thing they don't like again."