Bushwick grinned. "She supposed there were other carriages, and when she
found there weren't she hurried the victoria back for you."

"You think she believes all that? I'm glad she has the decency to be
ashamed of her behavior."

"I'm not defending her. Miss Macroyd knows how to take care of herself."

The matter rather dropped for the moment, in which Bushwick filled a pipe
he took from his pocket and lighted it. After the first few whiffs he
took it from his mouth, and, with a droll look across at Verrian, said,
"Who was your fair friend?"

If Verrian was going to talk of this thing, he was not going to do it
with the burden of any sort of reserve or contrivance on his soul. "This
afternoon?" Bushwick nodded; and Verrian added, "That was she." Then he
went on, wrathfully: "She's a girl who has to make her living, and she's
doing it in a new way that she's invented for herself. She has supposed
that the stupid rich, or the lazy rich, who want to entertain people may
be willing to pay for ideas, and she proposes to supply the ideas for a
money consideration. She's not a guest in the house, and she won't take
herself on a society basis at all. I don't know what her history is, and
I don't care. She's a lady by training, and, if she had the accent, I
should say she was from the South, for she has the enterprise of the
South that comes North and tries to make its living. It's all
inexpressibly none of my business, but I happen to be knowing to so much
of the case, and if you're knowing to anything else, Mr. Bushwick, I want
you to get it straight. That's why I'm talking of it, and not because I
think you've any right to know anything about it."