"As long as people have got ears and tongues, people will hear other people's names."
Lily paused a moment, and then spoke again, asking another question. "I suppose this woman does know him? She must know him, because he has written to her."
"She knows something about him, no doubt, and has some reason for wishing that you should quarrel with him. If I were you, I should take care not to gratify her. As for Mr. Eames's note, it is a joke."
"It is nothing to me," said Lily.
"I suppose," continued Emily, "that most gentlemen become acquainted with some people that they would not wish all their friends to know that they knew. They go about so much more than we do, and meet people of all sorts."
"No gentleman should become intimately acquainted with a woman who could write such a letter as that," said Lily. And as she spoke she remembered a certain episode to John Eames's early life, which had reached her from a source which she had not doubted, and which had given her pain and offended her. She had believed that John Eames had in that case behaved cruelly to a young woman, and had thought that her offence had come simply from that feeling. "But of course it is nothing to me," she said. "Mr. Eames can choose his friends as he likes. I only wish that my name might not be mentioned to them."
"It is not from him that she has heard it."
"Perhaps not. As I said before, of course it does not signify; only there is something very disagreeable in the whole thing. The idea is so hateful! Of course this woman means me to understand that she considers herself to have a claim upon Mr. Eames, and that I stand in her way."
"And why should you not stand in her way?"
"I will stand in nobody's way. Mr. Eames has a right to give his hand to any one that he pleases. I, at any rate, can have no cause of offence against him. The only thing is that I do wish that my name could be left alone." Lily, when she was in her own room again, did destroy the letter; but before she did so she read it again, and it became so indelibly impressed on her memory that she could not forget even the words of it. The lady who wrote had pledged herself, under certain conditions, "not to interfere with Miss L. D." "Interfere with me!" Lily said to herself; "nobody can interfere with me; nobody has power to do so." As she turned it over in her mind, her heart became hard against John Eames. No woman would have
