“And so I made eyes at you, after all,” she remarked bitterly, although the set smile did not leave her. She moved back further, threw her feet up on the bench, clasped her knees and looked at him through half-closed lids, as one might gaze at a likeable bad boy. “I made eyes at you via Walter, did I? And you did not run away as you promised.”
He protested as a man might in such circumstances, but she continued to gaze at him satirically until he was compelled to halt.
“I suppose my younger brother’s statements are all to be taken as gospel,” she said.
“Well, of course——” he began.
She went on firmly. “He was so exquisitely truthful about the trunks at Naples, and we’ve told you of other instances. Naturally he is to be believed.”
“Then you didn’t say——”
“Absolutely not!” she cried.
After all, she was in a way telling the truth. She had not made an intentional sentimental confession to Walter. She had told him what she had believed to be a necessary invention, and learned only later that it was in reality the truth.
Everything she had said to Walter had been done with the lightest of motives; and this clumsy man before her was making her action shameful. The thing he suggested, that she had not said—absolutely not!
Tears glistened in her eyes, tears of vexation and anger. She rose and started to go.