“I suppose I have no pride,” she repeated in a dead voice, “but I just couldn't help coming over and giving you a chance.”
“Giving me a chance?” said Honora.
“To explain—after the way you treated me at the polo game. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I shouldn't have believed it. I don't think I should have trusted my own eyes,” Mrs. Dallam went so far as to affirm, “if Lula Chandos and Clara Trowbridge and others hadn't been there and seen it too; I shouldn't have believed it.”
Honora was finding penitence a little difficult. But her heart was kind.
“Do sit down, Lily,” she begged. “If I've offended you in any way, I'm exceedingly sorry—I am, really. You ought to know me well enough to understand that I wouldn't do anything to hurt your feelings.”
“And when I counted on you so, for my tea and dinner at the club!” continued Mrs. Dallam. “There were other women dying to come. And you said you had a headache, and were tired.”
“I was,” began Honora, fruitlessly.
“And you were so popular in Quicksands—everybody was crazy about you. You were so sweet and so unspoiled. I might have known that it couldn't last. And now, because Abby Kame and Cecil Grainger and—”
“Lily, please don't say such things!” Honora implored, revolted.
“Of course you won't be satisfied now with anything less than Banbury or Newport. But you can't say I didn't warn you, Honora, that they are a horrid, selfish, fast lot,” Lily Dallam declared, and brushed her eyes with her handkerchief. “I did love you.”