"Pardieu! Do not pity me, or I shall give you a taste of my 'insolence'
in earnest! You may be a sovereign grand dame everywhere else, but you
can carry no terror with you for me, I promise you!"
"I do not seek to do so. If I did not feel interest in you, do you
suppose I should suffer for a moment the ignorant rudeness of an
ill-bred child? You fail in the tact, as in the courtesy, that belong to
your nation."
The rebuke was gentle, but it was all the more severe for its very
serenity. It cut Cigarette to the quick; it covered her with an
overwhelming sense of mortification and of failure. She was too keen and
too just, despite all her vanity, not to feel that she had deserved the
condemnation, and not to know that her opponent had all the advantage
and all the justice on her side. She had done nothing by coming here;
nothing except to appear as an insolent and wayward child before her
superb rival, and to feel a very anguish of inferiority before the
grace, the calm, the beauty, the nameless, potent charm of this woman,
whom she had intended to humiliate and injure!
The inborn truth within her, the native generosity and candor that
soon or late always overruled every other element in the Little One,
conquered her now. She dashed down her Cross on the ground, and trod
passionately on the decoration she adored.
"I disgrace it the first day I wear it! You are right, though I hate
you, and you are as beautiful as a sorceress! There is no wonder he
loves you!"
"He! Who?"
There was a colder and more utterly amazed hauteur in the interrogation
than had come into her voice throughout the interview, yet on her fair
face a faint warmth rose.
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