“ It seems you went driving with Sidney Dane yesterday, and stopped all the afternoon at some out-of-the-way hotel.
Violet (rising) . Charles, you have lost all right to ask me any question as to my conduct. Night after night you come home intoxicated. Long since I have ceased to entreat you to put a stop to your shameful behavior. You leave me to do as I choose. You refuse to go into society with me, and if anyone else, pitying my lonely life, tries to give me a little innocent pleasure, you, you find fault, and believe me capable of the extremest bad taste. ”

“ Mrs. Barron. So even you cannot resist the insidious fascination of a cup of tea!
Violet. It is not only the tea that allures me here and fascinates me.
Mrs. Duncan. Do not turn his head any further, Violet, it will be twisted off.
Mrs. S. It is Coleridge, I think, who says:
“He turns no more his head,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
V. C. Well twisted, Mrs. Shirley.
Miss Nibs. Mr. Van Cott has been very eloquent this afternoon singing your praises, my dear Violet, and now he is becoming heroic. Your influence over men is magical, my dear.
Violet. ”

“ Van Cott, you are asking too much if you expect us to believe there is no ground for all the stories about your friend.
V. C. Stories? Slanders! And who, of all of us, is free from the poison which exudes from the very pores of some reptiles in society. Get the facts beyond dispute before you condemn one of your own sisterhood. You do not know how soon you yourself may be shunned as if possessed of some horrid disease!
Miss N. I declare, sir!
Mrs. Duncan. Jane, he is right! ”

“ He stayed till late in the afternoon, and they had not gone when he left—and the proprietor said they had a room all to themselves.
Mrs. Shirley. Well, it does not surprise me in the least—for at Narragansett, this Summer, they say his devotion was quite open and well known to every one.
Mrs. Post-Duncan. Her drunken husband, her great beauty and charm of manner, all give a man like Dane every incentive, and I cannot half blame him. Of course there is no excuse for her, however.
Miss Nibs. I don’t see, I must say, how you can call her a beauty! ”

“ Dane—not yesterday, however, and not alone, but with a party of four.
Mr. B. Where there is smoke there must be some fire.
Violet. Enough! Believe what you will. The slander will work however slight the basis for it. I saw this afternoon the effect of it on some of my most intimate friends, though they did not speak of it. Oh! what a comfort it is to come home to a sympathetic friend instead of wasting one’s nervous tissues on innuendoes and covert sneers.
Enter footman.
Thomas. Madame is served. ”

“ It is a hard blow to my pride to have anyone, even you, think I would be so vulgar. Your belief in the story does not surprise me, as you have lost all sense of decency; but while claiming that I would be justified in doing anything, I will say to you that the only foundation for the slander is that I did take a drive with Mr. ”