"_We_ think the people here have behaved abominably to Mrs. Tailleur." She lifted her voice too. She didn't care who heard her. She rose, making herself look as tall as possible. "And if you're her friend," said she, "you ought to think so too." She walked out of the room, still superbly. Miss Keating was left to a painful meditation on misplaced confidence. CHAPTER VII She had had no intention of betraying Kitty. Kitty, she imagined, had sufficiently betrayed herself. And if she hadn't, as long as Kitty chose to behave like a dubious person, she could hardly be surprised if persons by no means dubious refused to be compromised. She, Miss Keating, was in no way responsible for Kitty Tailleur. Neither was she responsible for what other people thought of her. That was all, in effect, that she had intimated to Miss Lucy. She did not say what she herself precisely thought, nor when she had first felt that uncomfortable sensation of exposure, that little shiver of cold and shame that seized her when in Kitty Tailleur's society. She had no means of measuring the lengths to which Kitty had gone and might yet go. She was simply possessed, driven and lashed by her vision of Kitty as she had seen her yesterday; Kitty standing at the end of the garden, on the watch for Mr. Lucy; Kitty returning, triumphant, with the young man at her heels. She had seen Kitty with other men before, but there was something in this particular combination that she could not bear to think of. All the same, she had lain awake half the night thinking of it. She had Kitty Tailleur and Mr. Lucy on her nerves. She had desired a pretext for approaching Miss Lucy, and poor Kitty was a pretext made to her hand. Nothing could be more appealing than the spectacle of helpless innocence struggling with a problem as terrible as Kitty. Miss Keating knew all the time that as far as she was concerned there was no problem. If she disliked being with Kitty she had nothing to do but to pack up and go. Kitty had said in the beginning that if she didn't like her she must go. That course was obvious but unattractive. And the most obvious and most unattractive thing about it was that it would not have brought her any further with the Lucys. It would, in fact, have removed her altogether from their view. But she had done for herself now with the Lucys. She should have kept her nerves to herself, rasped, as they were to a treacherous tenuity. And as the state of her nerves was owing to Kitty, she held Kitty responsible for the crisis. She writhed as she thought of it. She writhed as she thought of Mr. Lucy. She writhed as she thought of Kitty; and writhing, she rubbed her own venom into her hurt. Of course she would have to leave Kitty now.