So why should the pain produced by a furtive tweak interfere with the amusement she experienced in the victim's jump?
But what had often saved her from a social lynching was her ability to laugh at her own discomfiture, and her unfeigned liking and respect for the turning worm.
* * * * * "And, my dear," she said, concluding the account of the adventure to Mrs.Ruthven that afternoon at Sherry's, "I've never been so roundly abused and so soundly trounced in my life as I was this blessed morning by that red-headed novice! Oh, my! Oh, la! I could have screamed with laughter at my own undoing." "It's what you deserved," said Alixe, intensely annoyed, although Rosamund had not told her all that she had so kindly and gratuitously denied concerning her relations with Selwyn.

"It was sheer effrontery of you, Rosamund, to put such notions into the head of a child and stir her up into taking a fictitious interest in Philip Selwyn which I know--which is perfectly plain to m--to anybody never existed!" "Of course it existed!" retorted Rosamund, delighted now to worry Alixe.
"She didn't know it; that is all.

It really was simple charity to wake her up.

It's a good match, too, and so obviously and naturally inevitable that there's no harm in playing prophetess.

.