Letty hesitated; then, remembering all she could of Harding's ill-natured gossip, she flung out some names, exaggerating and inventing freely. The emphasis with which she spoke reddened all the small face again—made it hot and common.
Tressady raised his shoulders as she came to the end of her tirade.
"Well, you know I don't believe all that—and I don't think Harding believes it. Lady Maxwell, as you once said yourself, is not, I suppose, a woman's woman. She gets on better, no doubt, with men than with women. These men you speak of are all personal and party friends. They support Maxwell, and they like her. But if anybody is jealous, I should think they might remember that there is safety in numbers."
"Oh, that's all very well! But she wants power, and she doesn't care a rap how she gets it. She is a dangerous, intriguing woman—and she just trades upon her beauty!"
Tressady, who had been leaning with his face averted from her, turned round with sparkling eyes.
"You foolish child!" he said slowly—"you foolish child!"
Her lips twitched. She put out a shaking hand to her cloak, that had fallen from her arms.
"Oh! very well. I sha'n't stay here to be talked to like that, so good-night."
He took no notice. He walked up to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
"Don't you know what it is"—he spoke with a curious imperiousness—"that protects any woman—or any man either for the matter of that—from Marcella Maxwell's beauty? Don't you know that she adores her husband?"