Bonnybell’s distraught orbs rolled with involuntary confidence towards Edward.
“You know, don’t you?”
“I have heard of it.”
“I suppose it is some very disreputable haunt of vice,” said Camilla; “but I am thankful to say I never heard of it.”
“It would be absolutely out of the question for any femme du monde to be seen there if she wished to keep a rag of character; and as to a jeune fille!”
“It was not true, then?”
The question was point-blank, as was the searching eye-beam that lit it, and Bonnybell felt that the answer must be to match.
“True!” she repeated, with an anguish of upbraiding in her voice. “Oh, I cannot have explained properly! How can you ask me? I know that poor Claire was not careful enough in the places she took me to; but M——’s! and I never went anywhere without her!”
If Mrs. Tancred here had to struggle with some difficulty in suppressing her opinions of the chaperonage thus waved in her face, she came off conqueror; and “poor Claire’s” laurels, and even the objectionable pet name itself, went unimpugned.
“Have you any idea who wrote it?”