"I suppose it was your friend Miss Kingsley. I half suspected that she would misrepresent me in private."
"You admit, then, that you are guilty?"
"I admit nothing. If, as your words seem to imply, Miss Kingsley says I acted unbecomingly at her house, she does not speak the truth. She is jealous. The long and short of it is, Mr. Spence was polite to me, and that made her angry. I believe she wishes to marry him herself," I said in the fulness of my anger.
"Virginia! I am astonished at you. It will not mend matters to insult your benefactors. What motive had Miss Kingsley, pray, in asking you to her house but kindness?"
"Pshaw!" I cried, now thoroughly roused. "She asked me because she thought I was fashionable, and because it would read well in the newspaper that I had been at one of her tea-parties. She imagined I was so silly and brainless that her friends would take no notice of me; and when it turned out that they did she lost her temper."
"You have lost yours, Virginia. I presume you will tell me presently that Mr. Spence flirted with you. I never heard such nonsense in my life, and wicked nonsense too; for you are doing your best to injure the character of a young woman who is in every way your superior, and has had none of your advantages. As I just said, I presume you will claim that Mr. Spence flirted with you, and that he wrote to you first."
"Wrote to me? He has never written to me; nor I to him, except to ask his advice about a teacher."
"You admit so much?"
"Why shouldn't I? I was interested in his theories, and I applied to him as the most natural person to consult."
"It is very easy to explain it away in that manner, but unfortunately for you my informant adopted—"