"Excuse me," she said. "I was awake almost all night, and am tired and nervous. Mr. Flint met Tilly Marsden by accident in the street. She did not know where to go, and so he brought her here. My father approved," she added a little haughtily.
"But why did she appeal to Mr. Flint?" pursued Miss Standish, who clung to her inquiries like a burr.
"Because she was in love with him," blurted out Winifred, irritated beyond the power of silence. "Can't you see! _This_ was why I asked him to leave Nepaug last summer."
"Tilly Marsden in love with Mr. Flint!" echoed Miss Standish, amazed beyond the desire to appear to have suspected it all along. "I can't understand it."
"I can," said Winifred; "I can understand it perfectly. Poor girl! I am heartily sorry for her."
"Well, you needn't be," responded Miss Standish, with an asperity born of impatience at her own lack of astuteness. "For my part, I have no doubt she has enjoyed the situation thoroughly from beginning to end. No, don't talk to me. I know those hysterical people. All they care about is making a sensation and being the centre of attention. It is my opinion that she has made fools of you and Mr. Flint too. As for her being in love with him, nonsense! She would have fallen in love with a wax figure at the Eden Musée, if it wore better clothes than she was accustomed to. It tickles her vanity to fancy herself in love with a gentleman. It is the next best thing to having him in love with her."
"Don't you think you're a little hard on her?" asked Winifred, whose feelings were unusually expansive this morning.
"I think you are entirely too soft about her," Miss Standish answered. "It is sickly sentimentalism like yours which is filling the hospitals with hysterical patients. Let 'em alone and they'll come round fast enough."
"How do you account for my sickly sentimentalism when I have no heart, as you told me the other day?" commented Winifred demurely, with downcast eyes.
"Most natural thing in the world," said Miss Standish, rising to an argument like an old war-horse to the sound of a trumpet. "Tenderheartedness is touched by the sufferings of others. Sentimentality is touched by your feeling for them, which is the most enjoyable form of sadness."