She had been sufficiently interested this time to follow me. "What was it indeed?"
I greeted her acquiescence, but I insisted. "And yet if she is extravagant—what do you do with it?"
"I thought you wouldn't hear of it!" she exclaimed.
I sought to combine firmness with my mildness. "What do you do with it?"
But she could match me at this. "I thought you wouldn't hear of it!"
"It's not a question of my dispositions. It's a question of her having been, or not been, for you 'all over the place,' and of everyone's also being, for you, on the chatter about it. You go by that in respect to Long—by your holding, that is, that nothing has been noticed; therefore mustn't you go by it in respect to her—since I understand from you that everything has?"
"Everything always is," Mrs. Briss agreeabl
