"One could have understood that." "Then you advise Maurice to marry this girl ?" asks Lady Rylton eagerly.
"Oh, no, no! I advise nothing," says Marian, with a little wave of her arms.
"But why ?" demands Lady Rylton angrily.
She had depended upon Marian to support her against Margaret.
"Simply because I won't," says Mrs.Bethune, her strange eyes beginning to blaze.
"Because you daren't ?" questions Lady Rylton, with a sneer.
"I don't understand you," says Marian coldly.
"Don't you ?" Lady Rylton's soft, little, fair face grows diabolical.
"Then let me explain." Margaret makes a movement towards her, but she waves her back.

"Pray let me explain, Margaret.

Our dear Marian is so intensely dull that she wants a word in season.

We all know why she objects to a marriage of any sort.

She made a fiasco of her own first marriage, and now hopes----" She would have continued her cruel speech but that Mrs.Bethune, who has risen, breaks into it.