“Good-by to whom, my dear?” said Jenny. “To me?”
“To his wife, of course,” said Nelly, huskily.
“Well, we don’t know that, do we?” said Jenny. “And, besides, why should he?”
“If he doesn’t he’s a cruel, heartless, unfeeling, unforgiving monster,” said Nelly.
And then Jenny burned in her turn to ask if Nelly herself had not intended to do as much by Captain Davy, but, being a true woman as well as her adversary, she found a crooked way to the plain question. “Is it at eleven,” she said, “that the carriage is to come for you?”
Mrs. Quiggin had recovered herself in a moment, and then there was a delicate bout of thrust and parry. “I’m so sorry for your sake, Jenny,” she said, in the old tone of delicious insincerity, “that the poor fellow is married.”
“Gracious me, for my sake? Why?” said Jenny.
“I thought you were half in love with him, you know,” said Nelly.
“Half?” cried Jenny. “I’m over head and ears in love with him.”
“That’s a pity,” said Nelly; “for, of course, you’ll give him up now that you know he has a wife.”