The same agitation which always shows when we talk thus overcame her
again. She did not speak.
"I could understand it better if you were a hysterical character. You
did not seem to be so, but now no ridiculous school miss of romance
could be more given to the vapours. You will absolutely destroy the
remaining respect I have for you, unless you tell me the truth, and what
is underneath in your mind influencing you to behave so childishly."
This stung her to the quick, as I had meant that it should. She bounded
up.
"Well,--I will then. I hate being in the house--with your mistress!"
She was trembling all over, and as white as marble.
I leaned back and laughed softly. My joy was so immense I could not help
it.
"To begin with, I have no mistress, but if I had how can it possibly
matter to you, since you hate me, and yourself arranged to be only my
secretary."
"You have no mistress!" I could see she thought I was lying ignobly.
"I had one, as of course you know, but the moment I began to think that
you might be an agreeable companion, I parted from her, at the time when
you saw the counterfoils in the cheque-book, and changed to me from
that moment."
"Then--?" she still looked incredulous.
"She has a cousin living in the flat above, married to an anticaire.
She comes to see her. You have no doubt met on the stairs. And on our
wedding day she came in here, not knowing, to thank me for a villa I had
given her at Monte Carlo as a good-bye present. I am very angry that she
intruded, and it shall never happen again."
"Is this true?" She was breathless.
That made me angry.
"I am not in the habit of lying," I said haughtily.
"Mademoiselle la Blonde," and her lips curled. "She came in while you
were at St. Malo. She inferred you had not parted then!"
"That was because she was jealous, and is very temperamental. I had
thought that quality was confined to her class."
I too can hit hard when I am insulted!
Alathea flashed at me. She was beginning to realize that she was at a
disadvantage.
"You are not unutterably shocked that I should have had a--friend, are
you?"
Her face grew contemptuous.
"No, my father had one. Men are all beasts."
"They may be in the abstract, but are not when they can find a woman
worth love and respect."