"Tilly Marsden in love with Mr. Flint!" echoed Miss Standish, amazed beyond the desire to appear to have suspected it all along. "I can't understand it."
"I can," said Winifred; "I can understand it perfectly. Poor girl! I am heartily sorry for her."
"Well, you needn't be," responded Miss Standish, with an asperity born of impatience at her own lack of astuteness. "For my part, I have no doubt she has enjoyed the situation thoroughly from beginning to end. No, don't talk to me. I know those hysterical people. [Pg 345] All they care about is making a sensation and being the centre of attention. It is my opinion that she has made fools of you and Mr. Flint too. As for her being in love with him, nonsense! She would have fallen in love with a wax figure at the Eden Musée, if it wore better clothes than she was accustomed to. It tickles her vanity to fancy herself in love with a gentleman. It is the next best thing to having him in love with her."
"Don't you think you're a little hard on her?" asked Winifred, whose feelings were unusually expansive this morning.
"I think you are entirely too soft about her," Miss Standish answered. "It is sickly sentimentalism like yours which is filling the hospitals with hysterical patients. Let 'em alone and they'll come round fast enough."
"How do you account for my sickly sentimentalism when I have no heart, as you told me the other day?" commented Winifred demurely, with downcast eyes.
"Most natural thing in the world," said Miss Standish, rising to an argument like an old war-horse to the sound of a trumpet. "Tenderheartedness is touched by the sufferings of others. Sentimentality is touched by your feeling for them, which is the most enjoyable form of sadness."
At this point McGregor, who with admirable discretion had retreated to the pantry, reappeared, served Miss Standish with coffee and eggs, and again vanished, closing the door behind him.
"Really," cried Winifred, half laughing, half vexed, "you're as bad as Mr. Flint, with your fine-spun differences."