After a moment she spoke again, from the comfortable place she had taken on the divan:
"Do you know, Nathalie, just for one moment I thought it might have been Guy of whom you were speaking."
Helen set the teapot down suddenly, and there was a moment's uncomfortable silence. Miss Stuart let her glance travel slowly from Helen's flushed face to Jean's grave one.
"Are you speaking of Mr. Appleton?" she asked lazily.
"Yes," replied Jean, with perfect unconsciousness, "I suppose you met him at the same time you did Helen. I wish it had been he instead of Mrs. Archer."
Miss Stuart shrugged her shoulders, and answered with insolent disregard of Jean's evident affection for Guy:
"A nice enough man in his way, but so deadly uninteresting, so lacking in that knowledge of the world which alone makes a man worth talking to."
Jean's eyes flashed, and her voice trembled with anger.
"Mr. Appleton is a very dear friend of ours, Miss Stuart, and to none of us is it agreeable to hear him spoken ill of."
She looked impulsively across at Helen, feeling sure that her sister would speak some word of vindication of Guy, but the girl's head was bent and she seemed wholly occupied in pushing the tea-cups aimlessly about on the polished surface of the mahogany tea-table. For the first time in her life Jean felt a contempt for her sister, and pressed her lips tightly together to keep down the bitter words that rose to them. Nathalie, who hated a scene above all things, and yet was too thoroughly in sympathy with Jean to feel equal to changing the conversation, sat down at the piano and began to drum.