I think it is perfectly outrageous to keep her in ignorance.

Everybody is talking about it." "Oh, Patty, you couldn't! How on earth could you tell her a thing like that ?" wailed George's mother, and she went on with a plaintive sigh as Gabriella opened the door: "George was always so mad about beauty, and though Gabriella has a fine face, she isn't exactly--" Then, at the startling apparition of Gabriella, with her face paling slowly above her black furs and her large indignant eyes fixed on them both, Mrs.Fowler wavered and broke off with a pathetic clutch at the pleasantness which had entirely departed from her manner.

"Why, Gabriella, I didn't know you had come in! I was just saying to Patty--" It was, as she said afterwards to her husband, exactly as if her mind had become suddenly blank.

She couldn't to save her life think of a single word to add to her sentence, and all the time Gabriella was standing there, as white as a ghost, with her accusing eyes turning slowly from one to the other of them.

"Somehow I just couldn't lie to her when she looked like that, and the truth seemed too dreadful," Mrs.
Fowler added that night to Archibald.