I'm thought a great scatterbrain, but I've had enough application of
mind to follow up those two. She hates me, and her way of showing it
is to pretend to be for ever defending me. When people say I've had
fifteen lovers she looks horrified and declares that quite half of
them were never proved. She has been afraid of me for years, and she
has taken great comfort in the vile, false things people have said
about me. She has been afraid I'd expose her, and she threatened me
one day when Osmond began to pay his court to you. It was at his house
in Florence; do you remember that afternoon when she brought you there
and we had tea in the garden? She let me know then that if I should
tell tales two could play at that game. She pretends there's a good
deal more to tell about me than about her. It would be an
interesting comparison! I don't care a fig about what she may say,
simply because I know you don't care a fig. You can't trouble your
head about me less than you do already. So she may take her revenge as
she chooses; I don't think she'll frighten you very much. Her great
idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable-a kind of full-blown
lily-the incarnation of propriety.
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