Believe me, I thank you from my heart."
"But you think me 'unsexed' all the same! I see, beau lion!"
The word had rankled in her; she could launch it now with telling
reprisal.
He smiled; but he saw that this phrase, which she had overheard, had not
alone incensed, but had wounded her.
"Well, a little, perhaps," he said gently. "How should it be otherwise?
And, for that matter, I have seen many a great lady look on and laugh
her soft, cruel laughter, while the pheasants were falling by hundreds,
or the stags being torn by the hounds. They called it 'sport,' but there
was not much difference--in the mercy of it, at least--from your war.
And they had not a tithe of your courage."
The answer failed to conciliate her; there was an accent of compassion
in it that ill-suited her pride, and a lack of admiration that was not
less new and unwelcome.
"It was well for you that I was unsexed enough to be able to send an
ounce of lead into a drunkard!" she pursued with immeasurable disdain.
"If I had been like that dainty aristocrate down there--pardieu! It had
been worse for you. I should have screamed, and fainted, and left you to
be killed, while I made a tableau. Oh, ha! that is to be 'feminine,' is
it not?"
"Where did you see that lady?" he asked in some surprise.
"Oh, I was there!" answered Cigarette, with a toss of her head southward
to where the villa lay. "I went to see how you would keep your promise.
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