Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/75

Rh —and from him—that in my absence you've been extremely kind to our friend here."

Rose, with a small but vivid fever-spot in her cheek, looked from one of the men to the other, while her kindled eyes showed a gathered purpose that had the prompt and perceptible effect of exciting suspense. "I don't mind letting you know, Mr. Bream, in advance exactly how kind I shall be. It would be affectation on my part to pretend to be unaware of your already knowing something of what has passed between this gentleman and me. He suffered, at my hands, in this place, four years ago, a disappointment—a disappointment into the rights and wrongs, into the good reasons of which I won't attempt to go further than just to say that an inevitable publicity then attached to it." She spoke with slow and deliberate clearness, still looking from Tony to Dennis and back again; after which her strange intensity fixed itself on her old suitor. "People saw, Mr. Vidal," she went on, "the blight that descended on our long relations, and people believed—and I was at the time indifferent to their believing—that it had occurred by my act. I'm not indifferent now—that is to any appearance of having been