'I cannot think how you can be so censorious!' retorts Prue, reddening. 'He says it is your one weakness. He admires your character more than that of any one he knows—he says it is—it is—laid upon such large lines; but that he has often been hurt by the harshness of your judgments of other people.'
'Indeed!' says Peggy, with a sort of snort. 'But I daresay that Lady Betty bandages up his wounds.'
'You must have noticed how kind she was to me last night,' continues Prue, thinking it wiser to appear not to have heard this last thrust. 'Of course, every one was longing to talk to her, but she quite singled me out—me, of all people! Oh, if you only knew!'
'If I only knew what?' inquires Margaret, struck by the recurrence of this phrase, to which on its first utterance she had paid little heed, as being the vague expression of Prue's girlish enthusiasm.
Prue hesitates a moment.
'If—if—you only knew the delightful plan she has made!'
'What plan?' shortly and sternly.
'She—she—I cannot think why she did it; it must have been the purest kind-heartedness—she asked me to go and stay with her.'
The colour has mounted brave and bright from Margaret's cheeks to her brow.
'She asked you to stay with her?' repeats she, with slow incisiveness; 'she had the impudence to ask you to stay with her!'