"Because he wanted to be even with you—that would be his expression—for your refusing to marry him."
"Oh, surely no man could be capable of anything so diabolical."
"I know a good deal about Rannock's antecedents, and I believe he could."
"But, even if he were capable of such baseness, how could he plan the thing so as to be met by people who know me?"
"That was not difficult. He had only to watch the papers, and throw himself in people's way. He knew that wherever he went there would be travellers who knew you. He chose Algiers, Corsica, Sardinia, as less public than Cannes or Nice, and so affected an air of avoiding the rush of tourists. God forgive me, if I wrong the man—I hate him too much to reason fairly about him, but the fact of his absence from London this season counts against him. It looks as if, having fired his shot, he kept himself clear of the consequences."
"Nobody would have cut him if he had been in London!" Lady Perivale said scornfully.
"Not more than usual. He was not liked—by the best people!"
"No! But he was so clever, so amusing, played the 'cello divinely—and he flattered me by telling me his troubles, and how hardly the world had used him. I thought him a victim. Oh, what an idiot I have been!"
"No, no. You have only been not quite a woman of the world."
"And I thought I was one. I thought I had learnt everything in my half-dozen years of society, and that the pristine simplicity of my father's parsonage was a thing of the past. And I suffered myself to be talked about, my name bandied about."