“But I have told you—an explanation.”
She unfolded the letter slowly.
“I can’t give you one. I have told you the truth, and I ask you to accept it, and I beg, I implore you to act upon it.”
“Suppose I were to make a violent attack on one of your friends, on Mr. Craven for instance?”
“Please don’t bracket Mr. Craven and that man together!” said Lady Sellingworth sharply.
Beryl Van Tuyn flushed with anger.
“But I do!” she said. “I choose to do that for the sake of argument.”
“Two such men have nothing in common, nothing! One is a gentleman, the other is a blackguard!”
Miss Van Tuyn thought of the previous evening, when Lady Sellingworth had dined with Craven while she had dined with Arabian, and she was stung to the quick.
“I cannot allow you to speak like this of a friend of mine without an explanation,” she said bitterly. “And now”—she spoke more hurriedly, as if fearing to be interrupted—“I will finish what I was going to say, if you will allow me. Suppose I were to make an attack on, say, Mr. Craven, to tell you that I happened to know he was thoroughly bad, immoral, a liar, anything you like. Do you mean to say you would give him up at once without insisting on knowing from me my exact reasons for branding him as unfit for your company? Of course you wouldn’t. And not only you! No one would do such a thing who had any courage or any will in them.”