"You've thought YOU'VE known what he's worth ?" "Indeed then, my dear, I believe I have--as I believe I still do." She had given it, Maggie, straight back, and again it had not missed.
Charlotte, for another moment, only looked at her; then broke into the words--Maggie had known they would come--of which she had pressed the spring.

"How I see that you loathed our marriage!" "Do you ASK me ?" Maggie after an instant demanded.
Charlotte had looked about her, picked up the parasol she had laid on a bench, possessed herself mechanically of one of the volumes of the relegated novel and then, more consciously, flung it down again: she was in presence, visibly, of her last word.

She opened her sunshade with a click; she twirled it on her shoulder in her pride.

"'Ask' you?
Do I need?
How I see," she broke out, "that you've worked against me!" "Oh, oh, oh!" the Princess exclaimed.
Her companion, leaving her, had reached one of the archways, but on this turned round with a flare.

"You haven't worked against me ?" Maggie took it and for a moment kept it; held it, with closed eyes, as if it had been some captured fluttering bird pressed by both hands to her breast.