"And it's true," coolly avowed Adela. "I like Charley Cleveland, and I choose to flirt with him. But if you strait-coated people think I have any wrong liking for him, you err woefully. Grace, all this is but idle talk. I shall never compromise myself by so much as a hazardous word, for Charley, or for any one else. I have just told him so."
"Pleasant! the necessity for such an assertion to one's lord and master!"
"I never loved any one in my life; and I'm sure I am not going to begin now. Not even Captain Stanley—though I did have a passing liking for him. Perhaps you will be surprised to hear, Grace, that there were odd moments in my life during the first year or two after my marriage, when I was nearer loving Francis Grubb than I had been of loving any one—only that I had set out by steeling my heart against him."
Grace gazed at her sister wonderingly.
"But that's all past: and of love I feel none for any mortal man, and don't mean to feel it. But I like amusement—and I am amusing myself with Charley Cleveland."
"You have no right to do it, Adela. What is but sport to you, as it seems, may be death to him."
"That is his look-out," laughed Adela. "My private belief is, if you care to know it, that my husband was thinking as much of Charley as of me when he took upon himself to lecture me just now. Of the consequences to Charley's vulnerable and boyish heart; though he did put it upon me and on what the world might say."
"How grievously you must try your husband!" exclaimed Grace.
"He's used to it."
"You provoking woman! You'll never go to heaven, I should say, if only for your treatment of him. Adela, you made your vows before Heaven to love and honour him: how do you fulfil them?"