"Yes."
"Do you want it in plain words?"
"Oh, dear, yes. I'm not afraid of plain words; and really I'm getting interested in him."
"Are you? The plain words are that he is a gambler and a seducer of women."
"Oh! And perhaps he smokes, too?"
The words left the smiling lips with a flippancy that seemed to Rodney nothing less than atrocious.
And yet he could not help hoping that she was saying them only to shock him. He had often thought of late that she liked to shock him; he could not understand such amusement, however.
"We won't talk any more here in public on this subject," Lawrence said, when he believed he could speak in his ordinary tone; "if we wish to exhaust the topic, let us go back to the hotel."
"Very well; and perhaps you'll have me whipped if I don't agree with you. I heard of a man the other day who said it was only cowardice on his part that he didn't whip his wife."