It did bring me to. "Because you were conscious of not telling me? Well, even if you didn't----!" "That made no difference," she inquired with a generous derision, "because you could always imagine? Of course you could always imagine--which is precisely what is the matter with you! But I'm surprised at your coming to me with it once more as evidence of anything." I stood rebuked, and even more so than I showed her, for she need, obviously, only decline to take one of my counters to deprive it of all value as coin. When she pushed it across I had but to pocket it again. "It _is_ the weakness of my case," I feebly and I daresay awkwardly mused at her, "that any particular thing you don't grant me becomes straightway the strength of yours. Of course, however"--and I gave myself a shake--"I'm absolutely rejoicing (am I not?) in the strength of yours. The weakness of my own is what, under your instruction, I'm now going into; but don't you see how much weaker it will show if I draw from you the full expression of your indifference? How _could_ you in fact care when what you were at the very moment urging on me so hard was the extravagance of Mrs. Server's conduct? That extravagance then proved her, to your eyes, the woman who had a connection with Long to keep the world off the scent of--though you maintained that in spite of the dust she kicked up by it she was, at a pinch, now and then to be caught with him. That instead of being caught with him she was caught only with Brissenden annoyed you naturally for the moment; but what was that annoyance compared to your appreciation of her showing--by undertaking your husband, of all people!--just the more markedly _as_ extravagant?" She had been sufficiently interested this time to follow me. "What was it indeed?" I greeted her acquiescence, but I insisted. "And yet if she _is_ extravagant--what do you do with it?" "I thought you wouldn't hear of it!" she exclaimed. I sought to combine firmness with my mildness. "What do you do with it?" But she could match me at this. "I thought you wouldn't hear of it!" "It's not a question of _my_ dispositions. It's a question of her having been, or not been, for you 'all over the place,' and of everyone's also being, for you, on the chatter about it. You go by that in respect to Long--by your holding, that is, that nothing has been noticed; therefore mustn't you go by it in respect to _her_--since I understand from you that everything has?" "Everything always is," Mrs. Briss agreeably replied, "in a place and a party like this; but so little--anything in particular--that, with people moving 'every which' way, it comes to the same as if nothing was. Things are not, also, gouged out to _your_ tune, and it depends, still further, on what you mean by 'extravagant.'" "I mean whatever you yourself meant." "Well, I myself mean no longer, you know, what I did mean." "She isn't then----?" But suddenly she was almost sharp with me. "Isn't what?"