"I only meant that there are perhaps better things to be done with Miss Stant than to criticise her.

When once you begin THAT, with anyone--!" He was vague and kind.
"I quite agree that it's better to keep out of it as long as one can.
But when one MUST do it--" "Yes ?" he asked as she paused.

"Then know what you mean." "I see.

Perhaps," he smiled, "_I_ don't know what I mean." "Well, it's what, just now, in all ways, you particularly should know." Mrs.Assingham, however, made no more of this, having, before anything else, apparently, a scruple about the tone she had just used.

"I quite understand, of course, that, given her great friendship with Maggie, she should have wanted to be present.