“Hate me! Well, wait until you see her look at me. It’s a sort of cross between a mud-turtle and a basilisk, and she’s forever telling my age and telling it wrong. And she lays for every man that comes near me.”
“Why, Molly, how awful!”
“I’m going slowly mad. You’ve no idea! she’s so jealous that life is not only a burden, it’s a weight that’s smashing me flatter every day. I’m getting a gray hair and a wrinkle, and all because of her. And she wrote Ivan—”
“Who’s Ivan?”
“He’s one of the men that I’ve accepted lately; he’s her cousin. He’s a prince and she’s a princess; but oh, my soul and body, my head is uneasy enough with lying and I’ve ceased to care a bit about the crown.”
“Why, Molly, wouldn’t you like to be a princess?”
“Not after this trip. Do you know what straits she’s driven me to? actually I came near taking a Turk at Trieste.”
“Did you?”
“No, I didn’t. I thought it over and I decided I wasn’t built for the monopoly of a harem.”