Julia was in an unpleasant mood. The emphasis Warren had laid on Miss Kent's histrionic powers had awakened her ready suspicion. As she found herself alone for a moment with her lover, his look of weary dejection aroused her resentment.
"It's most extraordinary, Burton," she complained, "that you should never have suspected her of being younger than she pretended. I could see that Mr. Warren didn't believe it for a minute."
Forbes replied with perfect conviction that Warren was an ass.
"I should have thought that if you didn't find it out when you were holding her hands, you would have realized it the moment you took her in your arms."
"Damnation!" Forbes was goaded beyond endurance. "I never took her in my arms."
"She said you did," insisted Julia, eying him suspiciously. "In that preposterous letter she wrote me, you know. She said you often held her hands and patted them and that sort of thing."
"I did, I admit it. I supposed her a contemporary of my father's, you remember."
"And she said that once, under rather unusual circumstances, you took her in your arms."
"An absolute lie!" blazed Forbes. "But of course if you are going to doubt my word, Julia—"
Julia said no, that she did not doubt him. She added that when a person had lived a lie for months, one more little falsehood would not mean much. Then she gave him her hand to kiss, and was annoyed when he only pressed it and said good night. She had to remind herself that though there was no one near to witness the act of devotion, Burton could not know that he was unobserved, and his undemonstrative demeanor was undoubtedly due to his unwillingness to compromise her.