We also turned in silence, and walked out of the court. "Why didn't you go with her?" said Roger, as soon as we were in the street. "I'm sorry I didn't if you wanted to go, Roger; but"-- "I think you might have gone, seeing I was with you," he said. "I don't think it would have been at all a proper thing to do, without knowing more about her," I answered, a little hurt. "You can't tell what sort of a place it may be." "It's a good place, wherever she is, or I am much mistaken," he returned. "You may be much mistaken, Roger." "True. I have been mistaken more than once in my life. I am not mistaken this time, though." "I presume you would have gone if I hadn't been with you?" "Certainly, if she had asked me, which is not very likely." "And you lay the disappointment of missing a glimpse into the sweet privacy of such a home to my charge?" It was a spiteful speech; and Roger's silence made me feel it was, which, with the rather patronizing opinion I had of Roger, I found not a little galling. So I, too, kept silence, and nothing beyond a platitude had passed between us when I found myself at my own door, my shopping utterly forgotten, and something acid on my mind. "Don't you mean to come in?" I said, for he held out his hand at the top of the stairs to bid me good-night. "My husband will be home soon, if he has not come already. You needn't be bored with my company--you can sit in the study." "I think I had better not," he answered. "I am very sorry, Roger, if I was rude to you," I said; "but how could you wish me to be hand-and-glove with a woman who visits people who she is well aware would not think of inviting her if they had a notion of her surroundings. That can't be right, I am certain. I protest I feel just as if I had been reading an ill-invented story,--an unnatural fiction. I cannot get these things together in my mind at all, do what I will." "There must be some way of accounting for it," said Roger. "No doubt," I returned; "but who knows what that way may be?" "You may be wrong in supposing that the people at whose houses she visits know nothing about her habits." "Is it at all likely they do, Roger? Do you think it is? I know at least that my cousin dispensed with her services as soon as she came to the knowledge of certain facts concerning these very points." "Excuse me--certain rumors--very uncertain facts." When you are cross, the slightest play upon words is an offence. I knocked at the door in dudgeon, then turned and said,-- "My cousin Judy, Mr. Roger"-- But here I paused, for I had nothing ready. Anger makes some people cleverer for the moment, but when I am angry I am always stupid. Roger finished the sentence for me. --"Your cousin Judy is, you must allow, a very conventional woman," he said. "She is very good-natured, anyhow. And what do you say to Lady Bernard?" "She hasn't repudiated Miss Clare's acquaintance, so far as I know."