She meant the cold–drawn phrase to hurt, and in that she succeeded, though her own voice sounded in her ears as if it had come from afar.
“Well, perhaps you ought to be told that he and I are engaged,” said Rosamund, stung to a sudden fury of lying. “Don’t imagine I bear malice. You are sweetly pretty, and Arthur is so susceptible! But he is also rather thoughtless. We were pledged to each other years ago, but were kept apart by—by a mother’s folly. Now I am free, and he came back to me, though I had to insist that at least a year should elapse between my husband’s death and the announcement of our engagement. All our friends know our sad story, and would forgive some measure of haste, but one has to consider the larger circle of the public.”
Then, indeed, Evelyn’s blood seemed to chill in her veins. The room and its occupants swam before her eyes, and the pain of repression became almost unbearable, yet she was resolved to carry off the honors in this duel unless she fainted.
“I gather that you are warning me against Captain Warden’s thoughtlessness, as you term it?” she said, compelling each word at the bayonet’s point, as it were.
“Oh, I was not speaking seriously, but we can let it go at that.”
“And you wish me to understand that you are his promised wife?”
“There, at least, I am most emphatic,” and Rosamund laughed, a trifle shrilly, perhaps, for a woman so well equipped with the armor of self–conceit.
“I suppose, then, that the late Mr. Laing has been dead a year, as I form one of that larger circle whose favorable opinion you court?”
For an instant Rosamund’s black eyes flashed angrily. She had expected tears and faltering, not resistance.