You had not perhaps realized that." Mrs.Noel's answer was bitterly distinct: "I didn't know anyone was sufficiently interested in my doings." Lady Casterley suffered a gesture of exasperation to escape her.
"Good heavens!" she said; "every common person is interested in a woman whose position is anomalous.

Living alone as you do, and not a widow, you're fair game for everybody, especially in the country." Mrs.Noel's sidelong glance, very clear and cynical, seemed to say: "Even for you." "I am not entitled to ask your story," Lady Casterley went on, "but if you make mysteries you must expect the worst interpretation put on them.
My grandson is a man of the highest principle; he does not see things with the eyes of the world, and that should have made you doubly careful not to compromise him, especially at a time like this." Mrs.Noel smiled.

This smile startled Lady Casterley; it seemed, by concealing everything, to reveal depths of strength and subtlety.

Would the woman never show her hand?
And she said abruptly: "Anything serious, of course, is out of the question." "Quite." That word, which of all others seemed the right one, was spoken so that Lady Casterley did not know in the least what it meant.

Though occasionally employing irony, she detested it in others.