"You use harsh language, my dear Mademoiselle Melanie,—language that"—
"That clearly expresses your meaning, and therefore sounds harshly. I am accustomed to speak plainly myself, and to strip of their flowery entourage the sentiments to which I listen. It may be an ungraceful habit, but it is a safe one. I am persuaded that if vice were always called by its true name, shame, misery, and ruin would darken fewer lives."
"Your candor is one of your greatest charms," said Lord Linden, who was deeply impressed by her singular and open treatment of a proposition which it had cost him a struggle to make.
"I am glad that you approve of my frankness, for I must be franker still. When I asked you a favor I was impelled by motives which may perhaps be explained to you hereafter; I was exceedingly unwilling to make the request which you so promptly accorded,—but the strength of those motives urged me to set aside prudence and reserve. I will not pretend to conceal that I feared you might be placed upon a footing of less restraint through the performance of the service I solicited at your hands, and that you might make your visits more frequent than I should be inclined to permit,—but I did not dream that the price you set upon the performance of this act of kindness was the privilege of offering me an insult."
"An insult? You do not imagine—you cannot suppose that I had any such intention?"
"You have spoken too plainly, my lord, to leave anything to my imagination; possibly, however, you may be acquainted with some fine phrase, unknown to me, in which you would couch what I have plainly styled, and as plainly comprehend to be an insult. Your advocacy with Mr. Rutledge has brought about a result which will benefit one who—who—who has the strongest claims upon me, and, under ordinary circumstances, I should have been your debtor. As it is, you and I are quits! The privilege of insulting me will suffice you! And now, my lord, you will excuse me, if, being a woman who earns her livelihood and whose time is valuable, I bring this interview to a close."
Madeleine, as she spoke, rose and courtesied, and would have passed out of the room; but Lord Linden, forgetting himself for a moment, prevented her exit by springing between her and the door.
"You will not leave me without, at least, one word of pardon?"
"I have said we were quits. You demanded a price for the service you rendered me; I have paid it by listening for the first time to language which, had I a father, or a brother, could not have been addressed to me with impunity; I have neither."