CHAPTER IV
A POINT OF HONOUR
"How like my husband!" said Mrs. Fielding impatiently, fidgeting up and
down the long drawing-room with a fretful frown on her pretty face. "Why
didn't you put a stop to it, Miss Moore? You might so easily have said
that the storm had upset me and I wasn't equal to a visitor at the
dinner-table to-night." She paused to look at herself in the gilded
mirror above the mantel-piece. "I declare I look positively haggard. I've
a good mind to go to bed. Only if I do--" she turned slowly and looked at
Juliet--"if I do, he is sure to be brutal about it--unless you tell him
you persuaded me."
Juliet, seated in a low chair, with a book on her lap, looked up with
a gleam of humour in her eyes. "But I am afraid I haven't persuaded
you," she said.
Mrs. Fielding shrugged her white shoulders impatiently. "Oh, of course
not! You only persuade me to do a thing when you know that it is the one
thing that I would rather die than do."
"Am I as bad as that?" said Juliet.
"Pretty nearly. You're coming to it. I know you are on his side all
the time. He knows it too. He wouldn't tolerate you for a moment if
you weren't.
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