"How odious men are! such scandal-mongers," says Lady Usk, angrily. "Talk of our 'damning with faint praise' There is nothing comparable to the way in which a man destroys a woman's reputation just by raising his eyebrows or twisting his moustache."
"I have no moustache to twist, and am sure there is no reputation which I wish to destroy," says her cousin.
"Then why do you ask me where I made her acquaintance?"
"My dear Dolly! Surely the most innocent and general sort of question ever on the lips of any human being!"
"Possibly; not in the way you said it, however; and when one knows that you were a great deal in Russia, it suggests five hundred things,—five thousand things: and of course one knows he was shot in a duel about her, and I believe people have talked."
"I have never helped them to talk. When do they not talk?"
And beyond this she cannot prevail upon him to go: he pretends that the Princess Sabaroff is beyond all possibility of any approach of calumny, but the protestation produces on her the impression that he could tell her a great deal wholly to the contrary if he chose.
"She certainly was staying with Madame de Luynes," she insists.
"Who ever said the lady might not stay with the Archbishop of Canterbury?" replies Gervase.
She is irritated and vexed.