"Lecture you--I?
Heaven forbid! I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint.

But it's usually the other way round, isn't it?
I'm expected to take hints, not to give them: I've positively lived on them all these last months." "Hints--from me to you ?" Lily repeated.
"Oh, negative ones merely--what not to be and to do and to see.

And I think I've taken them to admiration.

Only, my dear, if you'll let me say so, I didn't understand that one of my negative duties was NOT to warn you when you carried your imprudence too far." A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk.

But compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil.