She wrote to Nicholas and asked him to come and dine with her one evening when Lawrence Stephen was dining somewhere else. (Lawrence Stephen made rather a point of not going to houses where Vera was not received; but sometimes, when the occasion was political, or otherwise important, he had to. That was her punishment, as Bartholomew had meant that it should be.)
Nicky knew what he had been sent for, and to all his aunt's assaults and manoeuvres he presented an inexpugnable front.
"You mustn't do it; you simply mustn't."
He intimated that his marriage was his own affair.
"It isn't. It's the affair of everybody who cares for you."
"Their caring isn't my affair," said Nicky.
And then Vera began to say things about Desmond.
"It's absurd of you," she said, "to treat her as if she was an innocent child. She isn't a child, and she isn't innocent. She knew perfectly well what she was about. There's nothing she doesn't know. She meant it to happen, and she made it happen. She said she would. She meant you to marry her, and she's making you marry her. I daresay she said she would. She's as clever and determined as the devil. Neither you nor Headley Richards ever had a chance against her."
"She hasn't got a dog's chance against all you people yelping at her now she's down. I should have thought--"
"You mean I've no business to? That was different. I didn't take any other woman's husband, or any other woman's lover, Nicky."