"Oh, Rose, because ye are jaded with pamphleteers, and it is nothing to you what any say of you—cannot you understand her feelings?"
My lord pressed his handkerchief to his lips.
"I think you both, like women, make too much of it," he answered lightly, with a steady glance under drooping lids.
Miss Chressham felt herself colour angrily.
"Then I think you must take a woman's point of view of this matter, too, Rose; remember that she can blame you that the affair ever became public."
"In what way?" he asked.
Susannah, goaded into direct speech by what seemed to her his wilful slowness, answered with the blood still hotter in her cheeks.
"In this way: firstly, that you wrote to her at all; secondly, that you lost her letter."
The minuet had come to an end, the ballroom was emptying of all but a few couples who promenaded the shining floor; the tall distant windows were open on to gardens where the moonlight revealed the forms of trees and the lamps swung in their branches lit the revellers beneath; the Earl looked down the room, and made no answer to Miss Chressham's accusation, but she had a swift feeling that he was moved now; touched to the heart; as they had no longer music or laughter or the tumult of the throng to cover their speech, she lowered her voice and spoke in an added embarrassment.
"Ah, Rose, could you not have kept a better guard on it?"