Elsie obeyed.
"It's only this," said Pip bluntly. "I can't help it if I offend you. Have as little to do with that chap as you can."
A brief silence, and these two young people surveyed each other. There was no flinching on either side. Then Elsie's eyes blazed.
"How paltry! How mean!" she said hotly. "Fancy trying to do it that way!"
"What do you mean by 'it'?" said Pip.
Elsie bit her lip. She had given herself away.
"You mean," went on Pip, "that I say this because I am jealous."
That was exactly what Elsie had meant, and she knew in her heart now that she had been wrong: Pip was not that sort. Still, she was young and independent. Pip was young and tactless. An older and more experienced girl would have seen that Pip's warning was well worth listening to. An older and more experienced man would have delivered it in a different way. Neither of them being possessed of these advantages, the net result of Pip's impromptu effort was to invest Cullyngham with a halo of romantic mystery in the eyes of Elsie, who, after all, was only nineteen, and a daughter of Eve at that. Here were the elements of a pretty quarrel.
Five minutes later, after a hot altercation, Elsie sailed into the ballroom alone, with her small and admirably formed nose slightly in the air, leaving Pip, tardily recalling Raven's advice, to curse his tactless tongue on the settee behind the screen.
To him entered young Gresley. He dropped listlessly on to the settee.