"My dear Gertrude, what's this? Rachel weeping among her children?"
She spoke in high tones, but with an exaggeration of buoyancy which bespoke nervousness. When last these friends had met, it had been in the chamber of death itself; it was a little difficult, after that solemn moment, to renew the every-day relations of life without shock or jar.
"Come in, Conny, and if you must quote the Bible, don't misquote it."
Constance Devonshire, heedless of her magnificent attire, cast herself down by the side of her friend, and put her arms caressingly round her. Her quick blue eye fell upon the basket with its overflowing papers.
"Gerty, what is the meaning of this massacre of the innocents?"
"'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher,' since you seem bent on Scriptural allusion, Conny."
"But, Gerty, all your tales and things! I should have thought"—she blushed as she made the suggestion—"that you might have sold them. And Charlotte Corday, too!"
"Poor Charlotte, she has been to market so often that I cannot bear the sight of her; and now I have given her her quietus as the Republic gave it to her original. As for the other victims, they are not worth a tear, and we will not discuss them."
She gathered up the remaining manuscripts, and put them in a drawer; then, turning to her friend with a smile, demanded from her an account of herself.