He would say good-bye to her here.... Then another thought
struck him. He would go on with her.
"Isn't your curiosity terrible, Ellen!" he said, laughing. "If you didn't
happen to have a kind heart hidden somewhere about you, you'd be a
perfectly impossible woman. As it is, I'm not sure that you're not."
"I think perhaps I am," Ellen answered, laughing. "I do take a great
interest in other people's affairs. Well, why not? It prevents me from
being bored."
"But not from being a bore," said Ronder. "I hate to be unpleasant, but
there's nothing more tiresome than being asked why one's in a certain
mood. However, leave me alone and I will repay your curiosity by some of
my own. Tell me, how much are people talking about Mrs. Brandon and
Morris?"
This time she was genuinely surprised. On so many occasions he had checked
her love of gossip and scandal and now he was deliberately provoking it.
It was as though he had often lectured her about drinking too much and
then had been discovered by her, secretly tippling.
"Oh, everybody's talking, of course," she said.
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