“You must remember that she has not had much chance,” he said, making his plea with temperate carefulness.
“Who? Mademoiselle Lolotte or Mademoiselle Bonnybell?”
The juxtaposition of the two names made him unaccountably angry; but the habit of self-government was strong, and did not now fail him.
“I meant Miss Ransome.”
Something, however smothered, of what he was feeling must have pierced through his tone, or else her own inward monitor rebuked her, for Camilla rejoined in quite a different key—
“That is true, and you are right to remind me of it; but”—with a relapse into consternation—“What a girl! She speaks of her dead mother by her Christian name as Claire!”
“You can easily break her of that.”
“She was turned out of a boarding-school in Paris!”
“She told you so?”
“Yes, in answer to a question of mine about her education.”