"And, my dear," she said, concluding the account of the adventure to Mrs. Ruthven that afternoon at Sherry's, "I've never been so roundly abused and so soundly trounced in my life as I was this blessed morning by that red-headed novice! Oh, my! Oh, la! I could have screamed with laughter at my own undoing."
"It's what you deserved," said Alixe, intensely annoyed, although Rosamund had not told her all that she had so kindly and gratuitously denied concerning her relations with Selwyn. "It was sheer effrontery of you, Rosamund, to put such notions into the head of a child and stir her up into taking a fictitious interest in Philip Selwyn which I know—which is perfectly plain to m—to anybody never existed!"
"Of course it existed!" retorted Rosamund, delighted now to worry Alixe. "She didn't know it; that is all. It really was simple charity to wake her up. It's a good match, too, and so obviously and naturally inevitable that there's no harm in playing prophetess. . . . Anyway, what do we care, dear? Unless you—"
"Rosamund!" said Mrs. Ruthven exasperated, "will you ever acquire the elements of reticence? I don't know why people endure you; I don't, indeed! And they won't much longer—"
"Yes, they will, dear; that's what society is for—a protective association for the purpose of enduring impossible people. . . . I wish," she added, "that it included husbands, because in some sets it's getting to be one dreadful case of who's whose. Don't you think so?"
Alixe, externally calm but raging inwardly, sat pulling on her gloves, heartily sorry she had lunched with Rosamund.
The latter, already gloved, had risen and was coolly surveying the room.
"Tiens!" she said, "there is the youthful brother of our red-haired novice, now. He sees us and he's coming to inflict himself—with another moon-faced creature. Shall we bolt?"
Alixe turned and stared at Gerald, who came up boyishly red and impetuous: