"You're as bemused as Barbara."
"I haven't studied what you call the type," I replied. "But I've studied an individual, which you haven't."
She swung off the table. "Oh, well, have it your own way—Paul and Virginia, if you like. What does it matter to me?"
"Yes, my dear," said I. "That's just it—what the dickens does it matter to you?"
"Nothing at all." She snapped a dainty finger and thumb.
"You've turned Jaffery out of your house," I continued, with malicious intent. "You've sworn never to set eyes on him again. You've banished him beyond your horizon. His doings now can be no concern of yours. If he chose to elope with the fat woman in a freak museum, why shouldn't he? What would it have to do with you?"
"Only this," said Doria, coming back to the table corner but not sitting on it. "It would make Jaffery's declaration to me all the more insulting."
"'Having known me to decline'?" I quoted.
"Precisely."
She tossed her head, in her wounded pride. But unknowingly she had swallowed my bait. I had hooked my little fish. I smiled to myself. She was eaten up with jealousy.