"Yes," said the girl, with a quivering sigh; "it must be hateful to him." She paused, and then she rushed on with bitter self-reproach. "And I—I have helped to make it so! O Mrs. Bowen, perhaps it's I who have been trifling with him. Trying to make him believe—no, not trying to do that, but letting him see that I sympathised—Oh, do you think I have?"
"You know what you have been doing, Imogene," said Mrs. Bowen, with the hardness it surprises men to know women use with each other, they seem such tender creatures in the abstract. "You have no need to ask me."
"No, no."
"As you say, I warned you from the first."
"Oh yes; you did."
"I couldn't do more than hint; it was too much to expect——"
"Oh, yes, yes."
"And if you couldn't take my hints, I was helpless."
"Yes; I see it."
"I was only afraid of saying too much, and all through that miserable veglione business I was trying to please you and him, because I was afraid I had said too much—gone too far. I wanted to show you that I disdained to be suspicious, that I was ashamed to suppose that a girl of your age could care for the admiration of a man of his."