"Incorrect, Lady Grace. I do care for him; I enjoy his friendship amazingly. What I said was, that I did not love him. That would be too absurd."
"Call it flirtation, don't call it friendship," wrathfully retorted Grace. "And he must be devoid of brains as a calf, to attach himself to you, if he has done it. I hope nothing of this will reach the ears of Mary or of his father. They would not believe him capable of such folly. From this hour, Adela, you must give it up."
"Just what Mr. Grubb has been good enough to tell me; but 'must' is a word I do not understand," lightly rejoined Adela. "Neither you nor he will make me break off my flirtation with Charles Cleveland. I shall go into it all the more to spite you."
"If I were Francis Grubb I should beat you, Adela."
"If!" laughingly echoed Lady Adela. "If you were Francis Grubb, you would do as he does. Why, Gracie, girl, he loves me passionately still, for all his assumed indifference. Do you think there are never moments when he betrays it? He is jealous of Charley; that's what he is, in spite of his dignified denial—and oh, the fun it is to me to have made him so!"
"Adela," said Grace, sadly, "does it never occur to you that this behaviour may tire your husband out?—that his love and his patience may give way at last?"
"I wish they would!" cried the provoking girl, little seeing or caring, in her reckless humour, what the wish might imply. "I wish he would go his way and let me go mine, and give me hundreds of thousands a-year for my own share. He should have the dull rooms in the house and I the bright ones, and we would only meet at dinner on state occasions, when the world and his wife came to us."
Lady Grace felt downright angry. She wondered whether Adela spoke in her heart's true sincerity.
"There's no fear of it, Gracie: don't look at me like that. My husband would no more part company with me, whatsoever I might do, than he would part with his soul. He loves me too well."
"It is a positive disgrace to have one's married sister's name coupled with a flirtation," grumbled Grace: for the Lady Acorn, whatever might be her failings as to tongue and temper, had brought her daughters up to the purest and best of notions. "That reverend man, Dr. Short—I cannot think how it came to his ears—hinted at it today in talking with mamma when they met at the picture-galleries. He——"