“From you,” Miss Skillern exactly corrected her.
“Indeed,” the other cried heatedly, “from me! I think not. Didn't you ask? Answer me that, if you please. I heard you with my own ears say, 'How?' While now, before my face, you try to deny it.” It was plain to Linda that Miss Skillern was totally unmoved by the charge. She moved her lorgnette up, gazing stolidly at the musical programme. “From you,” she said again, after a little. Mrs. Randall suddenly regained her equilibrium.
“If the ladies of this hotel are afraid to face that creature I—I—am not. I'll tell her in a minute what a respectable person thinks of her goings-on. More than that, I shall complain to Mr. Rennert. 'Mr. Rennert,' I'll say, 'either she leaves or me. Choose as you will. The reputation of your hotel—'” she spluttered and paused.
“Proof,” Miss Skillern pronounced judicially; “proof. We know, but that's not proof.”
“He has a wife,” Mrs. Randall replied in a shrill whisper; “a wife who is an invalid. Mrs. Zoock, she who had St. Vitus' dance and left yesterday, heard it direct. George A. Jasper, woolen mills in Frankford, Pennsylvania. Mr. Rennert would thank me for that information.”
They had forgotten Linda. She stood rigid and cold—they were blaming her mother for going out in a rolling chair with Mr. Jasper because he was married. But her mother didn't know that; probably Mr. Jasper had not given it a thought. She was at the point of making this clear, when it seemed to her that it might be better to say that her mother knew everything there was about Mr. Jasper's wife; she could even add that they were all friends.
Linda would have to tell her mother the second she came in, and then, of course, she'd stop going with Mr. Jasper. Men, she thought in the elder's phrase, were too beastly for words.
“After all,” Mrs. Randall was addressing her again, “you needn't say anything at all to your mama. It might make her so cross that she'd spank you.”
“Mother never spanks me,” Linda replied with dignity.
“If you were my little girl,” said Miss Skillern, with rolling lips, “I'd put you over my knee with your skirts up and paddle you.”