Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/82

68 asked Mrs. Beever if you were still in love with him."

She clasped her hands so eagerly that she almost clapped them. "Then you do care?"

He was looking beyond her now—at something at the other end of the garden; and he made no other reply than to say: "She didn't give you away."

"It was very good of her; but I would tell you myself, you know, perfectly, if I were."

"You didn't tell me perfectly four years ago," Dennis returned.

Rose hesitated a minute; but this didn't prevent her speaking with an effect of great promptitude. "Oh, four years ago I was the biggest fool in England!"

Dennis, at this, met her eyes again. "Then what I asked Mrs. Beever"

"Isn't true?" Rose caught him up. "It's an exquisite position," she said, "for a woman to be questioned as you question me, and to have to answer as I answer you. But it's your revenge, and you've already seen that to your revenge I minister with a certain amount of resolution." She