"Yes," she said, quite simply and courageously.
"I thought you could hardly help seeing I loved you, however blind other people might be."
Her head was turned away again and she looked out of the window, as she answered in a voice that tried to be light:
"But it isn't of any consequence, is it? I suppose you're always in love with somebody or other."
"Is that what people told you about me?"—and it was new and wonderful to her to hear George Goring speak with this calmness and gravity—"You've not been long in the world, little girl, or you'd know how much to believe of what's said there."
"No," she answered, in turn becoming calm and deliberate. "When I come to think of it, people only say that women generally like you and that you flirt with them. I—I invented the rest."
"But, good Heavens! Why?" There was a note of pain and wonder in his voice.
She paused, and his hand moved under her cloak to be laid on the two slender hands clasped on her lap.
"I suppose I was jealous," she said.