Her thoughts were elsewhere--back with the man who, that afternoon, had first rescued her and afterwards treated her with blunt candour that had been little less than brutal.

She felt sore and resentful--smarting under the same dismayed sense of surprise and injustice as a child may feel who receives a blow instead of an anticipated caress.
Indulged and flattered by everyone with whom she came in contact, it had been like a slap in the face to find someone--more particularly someone of the masculine persuasion--who, far from bestowing the admiration and homage she had learned to look for as a right, quite openly regarded her with contemptuous disapproval--and made no bones about telling her so.
His indictment of her had left nothing to the imagination.

She felt stunned, and, for the first time in her life, a little unwilling doubt of herself assaulted her.

Was she really anything at all like the woman Michael Quarrington had pictured?
A woman without heart or conscience--the "kind of woman he had no place for"?
She winced a little at the thought.

It was strange how much she minded his opinion--the opinion of a man whom she had only met by chance and whom she was very unlikely ever to meet again.