"I hate him!" she said, with a stamp of her little foot.
"The King? So do I!" And Zouche lit a cigarette and stuck it between
his lips by way of a stop-gap to a threatening violent expletive; "An
insolent, pampered, flattered fool! Yet you wanted to dance before him;
and now you've done it! The fact will serve you as a kind of
advertisement! That is all!"
"I do not want to be advertised through _his_ favour!" And Pequita
closed her tiny teeth on her scarlet under-lip in suppressed anger;
"But I have not danced before him yet! I _will_!"
Zouche looked at her sleepily. He was not drunk--though he had,--of
course,--been drinking.
"You have not danced before him? Then what have you been doing?"
"Walking!" answered Pequita, with a fierce little laugh, her colour
coming and going with all the quick wavering hue of irritated and
irritable Spanish blood, "I have, as they say 'walked across the
stage.' I shall dance presently!"
He smiled, flicking a little ash off his cigarette.
"You are a curious child!" he said; "By and by you will want severely
keeping in order!"
Pequita laughed again, and shook back her long curls defiantly.
"Who is that cold woman with a face like a mask and the crown of
diamonds, that sits beside the King?"
It was Zouche's turn to laugh now, and he did so with a keen sense of
enjoyment.
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