Dorris's fists clenched themselves; she remembered bare-faced admiration of that charming laugh, and other tributes to her fascination, bold almost to impudence not a week old, from this false man.
"Well," replied Mrs. Dinwiddie, "I judge the poor gell can't so much as go to sleep without acting. She's just made up of affectations right through, top skirt and lining, inside and out. I should be surprised if her mother didn't get headache and her father the hump."
"I don't care," Bertie began doggedly, "if she has got the voice of a screech-owl——"
"Oh, come now, Mr. Trevor, her voice is well enough, poor girl, if she wouldn't always yell at the top of it."
"Beauty is beauty, however soulless," he continued stolidly. "And if she does strut like a peacock——"
"Et tu, Bertie!" the poor peacock sighed metaphorically.
"—She's got the peacock's justification. Her hair is perfectly stunning."
"So is her voice," muttered the Major.
"Assez, assez! cette pauvre demoiselle," M. Isidore remonstrated, as he had continued to do at intervals.
"And she can't help it," added the chivalrous Bertie.