“I should say that particular crowd didn’t. Of course you mustn’t confound all wealthy people with them. They’re better than some but a great deal less interesting than the best of the wealthy. And of course just because their life doesn’t happen to appeal to your temperament—or mine—”
“Are you always so perfectly balanced?” asked Freda, so admiringly as to escape impertinence.
“I wish I were ever balanced,” answered Margaret. “And now suppose you tell me a little more about what happened so I’ll be sure how I had better take things up with the Brownley girls.”
Freda had been thinking.
“It really began with me,” she said. “Ted Smillie was Barbara’s man and I was flattered when he noticed me. And of course I liked him—then—so I let it go on and she hated me for that.”
“Stop me if I pry—but do you care for the young man now?”
“Oh—no!” cried Freda. “I’m just mortally ashamed of myself for letting myself in as much as I did.”
“Everybody does.”
Margaret’s remark brought other ideas into Freda’s mind. She remembered Gregory Macmillan and his apparent intimacy with Margaret. But she asked nothing, going on, under Margaret’s questioning, with her tale of the night before, and as they came to the part of Gregory’s intervention, Margaret vouchsafed no information.
An hour later, she came back from the Brownley house, with Freda’s suitcase beside her in a taxi.