"My dear, I never believe any scandal—even against a woman I detest, and when I want to believe it—until I have had mathematical proof of it. And I don't believe this of you, even if twenty people are going about London who swore they met you honeymooning with that wretch."
"Twenty people! Oh, Lady Morningside! Susan Rodney spoke of three or four."
"That was some time ago, perhaps. There are at least twenty now who declare they saw you—saw you—in Algiers—Sardinia—on board the Messageries steamer—Lord knows where. And they all swear that they thought you one of the nicest women in London—only they can't go on knowing you, on account of their daughters—their daughters, who read Zola, and Anatole France, and Gabriele d'Annunzio, and talk about 'em to the men who take them in to dinner, and borrow money of their dressmakers? I have only one daughter, and I'm never afraid of shocking her. She has worked for a year in an East-end hospital, and she knows twice as much about human wickedness as I do."
"And you don't believe a word of this story, Marchioness?"
"Not a syllable. But I know that Rannock is the kind of man my husband calls a bad egg; and I think you were not very wise in having him about you so much last season."
"You see, he wanted to marry me—for the sake of my money, no doubt—they are so much more persevering when it's for one's money—and I refused him three times—and he took my refusal so nicely——"
"One of the worst-tempered men in London?"
"And said, 'Since we are not to be lovers, let us at least be pals.' And the man is clever—likes the books I like, and the music I like, and plays the 'cello wonderfully, for an amateur."
"Oh, I know the wretch is clever. A fine manner, the well-born Scotchman, polished on the Continent, what women call a magnetic man."
"I liked him, and thought people were hard upon him—and I had been warned that he was dangerous."