"What a world it is! I have seen my share of it, and upon my soul there is nothing to touch English piety. And there is no one who knows so much about everything as a good back-country English gentlewoman. I suppose she has it all straight from the Almighty."
Rose sat very straight and stiff in her chair.
"That's right, Mr. Jeremy Winter, be blasphemous. At your age——"
"At my age, Miss Benham, you will be a very old woman. As it is, the women still fall in love with me."
"Oh, you wretched old reprobate."
Jeremy went off into huge yet quiet laughter, and it was in the midst of it that Jasper entered with the steady, gleaming eyes of a man who had desires to satisfy and enemies to grapple.
"Hallo!"
He had one glimpse of Rose's stiff and implacable face.
"What have you been doing, Jerry?"
"I? Nothing, sir, nothing. But Miss Benham will have it that I am a disgusting old reprobate and not fit to be in this house."