Part 1
“And why mustn't I?” Alice demanded vigorously.
Her cousin regarded her with indolent amusement. “My dear, you are positively the most energetic person I know. It is refreshing to see with what interest you enter into a discussion.”
Miss Frome, very erect and ready for argument, watched her steadily from the piano stool of their joint sitting room. “Well?”
“I didn't say you mustn't, my dear. I know better than to deal in imperatives with Miss Alice. What I did was mildly to suggest that you are going rather far. It's all very well to be civil, but—” Mrs. Van Tyle shrugged her shoulders and let it go at that. She was leaning back in an easychair and across its arm her wrist hung. Between the fingers, polished like old ivory to the tapering pink nails, was a lighted cigarette.
“Why shouldn't I be—pleasant to him? I like him.” Her color deepened, but the eyes of the girl did not give way. There was in them a little flare of defiance.
“Be pleasant to him if you like, and if it amuses you. But—” Again Valencia stopped, but after a puff or two at her cigarette she added presently: “Don't get too interested in him.”
“I'm not likely to,” Alice returned with a touch of scorn. “Can't I like a man and admire him without wanting to marry him? I think that's a hateful way to look at it.”
“It's your interpretation, not mine,” Mrs. Van Tyle answered with perfect good humor. “Of course you couldn't want to marry him under any circumstances. His station in life—his anarchistic ideas—his reputation as a confirmed libertine—all of them make the thought of such a thing impossible.”
Miss Frome's mind seized on only one of the charges. “I don't believe it. I don't believe a word of it. Anybody can throw mud—and some of it is bound to stick. He's a good man. You can see that in his face.”