Read "Sophia" by Stanley J. Weyman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It even seemed to Sophia that his face, as he stood watching her, took on a smirk of satisfaction, faint, but odious; and in that moment, and for the moment, she came near to hating him. She knew that in the set in which she moved much might be overlooked, and daily and hourly was overlooked, in the right people. But to be lost at Vauxhall at midnight, in the company of an unauthorised lover -- this had a horribly clandestine sound; this should be sufficient to blacken the fame of a poor maid -- or her country education was at fault. And knowing this, and hearing the confused sounds of departure rise each moment louder and more importunate, the girl grew frantic with impatience.
"Which way? Which way? " she cried. "Do you hear me? Which way are the boxes, Mr. Hawkesworth? You know which way I came. Am I to think you a dolt, sir, or -- or what?"