Mentally I rubbed my hands with glee at this little tirade of hers. How beautifully she had added to her account She had started a brand-new page and it was already scored most heavily against her. Oh, Marion, Marion, how little you know me but how well you will before too many hours have passed, I told myself, and I confess that I was hard put to it to keep from smiling like a predatory beast of prey who finds that the elusive gazelle has unwarily entered his lair!
“You have made an accusation, Marion,” I said as coldly as she had done to me, “that is not seemly, for now you have taken upon yourself the temerity-to use your own picturesque term-of judging me without even knowing me, just as you did before when I first knew Alice. I had never met you when I first knew your lovely sister, and I’m now fully convinced that she jilted me precisely because you had already formed your own opinionated notion of what my character must be. I blamed her at the time, I no longer do so, for we are reconciled. But if your own marriage has come to such a drastic end, Marion, would it not be more reasonable to ask yourself if it is perhaps not you who are at fault and therefore, if that is so, that your opinions and your judgments of people may play you false?”
Color flamed in her cheeks and she imperiously rose. “Iknew it was a mistake to come here. I should have known that you would regale me with such an ignoble accusation, sir,” she flung at me.