"Unkind! Oh, my Aunt Eliza!"
"You don't care. You don't care," she moaned. "You don't care what happens to me. I might die to-morrow, and you wouldn't care."
"Oh, come—" he ventured.
But Violet wouldn't come. She was off, borne from him on the rising tide of hysteria.
"It's true! It's true!" she cried. "Else you wouldn't use me like you do."
"But look here. Whatter you goin' on about? Just because I don't want you to have anything to do with Mercier."
She raised her flaming face at that.
"It's a lie! It's a beastly lie! I never had anything to do with Mercier."
"Who said you'd had anything to do with him?"
"You did. And I hardly know him. I've hardly seen him. I've hardly spoken to him be—be—before."