Sir Harold Evans, the urbane and witty editor-at-large of The Week magazine, looked Carly Fiorina in the eyes and said what everyone was thinking: “There’s a 600-pound gorilla in the room and it’s that you were sacked by Hewlett-Packard.”

Sir Harold was saying this in front of his kind of crowd: A well-mannered, well-manicured, and painfully polite mix of society ladies, political leaders, and the press. So everyone at Le Cirque yesterday inched in a little closer at lunch when Mrs. Fiorina began to address the topic of her, well, early retirement from H-P.

“People are calling my experience there a ‘prequel’ to the current scandal,” she said. “Certain people didn’t relish my straight talk about appropriate behavior in the boardroom. I think [my old colleagues] are more than ashamed now.”

Mrs. Fiorina is speaking of the Hewlett-Packard executives who disgraced themselves after revelations that they apparently approved hiring honest-to-God spies to go through the rubbish of directors and financial reporters covering the company.

It was a vindication, and the book tour of “Tough Choices” is extraordinarily triumphant. (Mrs. Fiorina spoke to Columbia Business School students a day before, where, we are certain, the food isn’t nearly up to par with Le Cirque.)

Margaret Carlson, Washington editrix-at-large of The Week, slobbered like an infatuated school girl over Mrs. Fiorina during her lunch talk: “I thought the Washington press corps was tough! The financial press is even tougher!”

The new 600-pound gorilla, the one even Sir Harold failed to address, is what Mrs. Fiorina plans to do next. Judging by her address at The Week’s luncheon yesterday, she’s going to do anything she darn well wants.