“And you are not giving me your opinion. Come, Miss Mannering, you’ve read it. What do you think of it?”
Later in the day she might have put it more gently. Just now she could manage nothing more kindly than: “I think it’s appalling. It’s false from start to finish,” and she rejoiced to see how much her vehement candour disconcerted him. “I’ve drawn first blood,” she thought; but bleeding as a curative process is discredited.
“But,” he said, “it is very like others of my series. I made sure it would be popular.”
“I’m not a judge of that. It’s possible enough. And now”—she smiled a little wryly—“I’m afraid you know my opinion of the series. I warned you,” she added hastily, “that my opinions were intolerant. I imagine you will not ask for them again.” She turned resolutely to the typewriter and took its cover off. She thought she had closed the discussion, and was suiting action to her word, and sitting at her desk when he motioned her back to the chair opposite his. It was not the sort of motion one ignored.
“I may ask for them again or I may not,” he said; “but in the meantime I have certainly not given you anything to do at that machine, and we were trying to forget that you are my typist.”
“I thought after what I’ve said that it might be time to remember it,” she suggested.
“Not at all,” he assured her. “I get to the bottom of things, and, if you please, we’ll have this out.”
“Of course, if this is part of your secretary’s work——” she began.
He cut her short. “It is. Now, you find my novel series appalling?”
Effie was growing angry. In vino veritas—and in anger. “I could go even further,” she said. “I find it degrading.”