"If I were in your place I should be ashamed at having made such an exhibition of myself!" she exclaimed, with bitter sarcasm.
"I have made no exhibition of myself," I protested. "I like Mr. Keppel for his blunt manliness—but beyond that—why, Ulrica, you must be mad to suspect me of flirtation with him!"
"He's old enough to be your father," she snapped. "Yet Doris Ansell whispered in the drawing-room that she had watched him holding your hand in lover-like attitude."
"Then Doris Ansell lied!" I exclaimed angrily. "He never touched my hand. It is a foul libel upon him and upon me."
"I saw you myself walking with him."
"And you were walking with Gerald. He was, as usual, flirting with you," I said spitefully.
Her cheeks crimsoned, and I saw that my words had struck home. How cruel and ill-natured was such gossip as this; how harmful to my good name, and to his. I knew Doris Ansell well—a snub-nosed, under-sized little gossip, and had always believed that she entertained towards me some ill-will—for what reason I never could ascertain.
"And why should you fly into such a rage?" she inquired, with affected coolness. "If you were to change into Mrs. Ben Keppel you would at least possess a very substantial income, even if your husband was a rough diamond. You would exact the envy of half the women we know, and surely that's quite sufficient success to have obtained. One can't have everything in this world. Money is always synonymous with ugliness where marriage is concerned."
"I don't see any object to be obtained by discussing the matter further," I answered, with rising indignation. "Such a circumstance as you suggest will never occur, you may depend upon it."
"My dear Carmela," she said, laughing, "you are still a child, I really declare!"