"What, pray—what would you have selected?" she asked, with breathless haste.
He stooped forward, and with a smile upon his lips, as if he had been uttering a compliment, whispered "A Niobe."
The tone in which this was uttered, more than the words, stung her.
She drew back with a suddenness that scattered the light like sunbeams from her jewelled garland.
"Everything that Niobe loved turned to stone. In that we are alike," she said, in a suppressed voice that trembled with feeling.
He bent his head and was about to answer in the same undertone, but she drew back with a low defiant laugh.
"No—no. It is a sad character, and I have long since done with tears," she answered, turning to a gay group that had gathered around her, "What say you, gentlemen, our friend here prefers a mournful character; do I look like a woman who ever weeps?"
"Not unless the angels weep," answered one of the group.
"Angels do weep when they leave the homes assigned to them," whispered Leicester, again bending towards her, "and it is fitting that they should."
She did not recoil that time. His words rather stung her into strength, and strange to say, Leicester seemed less hateful to her while uttering these covert reproaches, than his first adroit compliment had rendered him. A retort was on her lip, but that instant a group came in from the dancing saloon, laughing and full of excitement.