"You admit it, then?"
"I admit nothing. I neither confirm nor deny. I don't know."
"But we came out here to arrange it. Or don't you remember that, either?"
"I fancied it was because you wished to smoke."
"God!" he exclaimed suddenly. "How can you be so bitterly cruel!"
She may have been a reincarnated tigress—in after years there was a man who always declared so—and then again she may not. It is quite possible that circumstance and environment made her what she was.
Certainly at heart Nina Darling was not a bad woman. There were times when she tried very hard to be a very good woman according to her lights. And yet, somehow, somewhere within her she seemed to possess a faculty for making men wretched.
The world—or a very large part of it—regarded it as an insatiable craving, an unappeasable appetite—a sort of lust for personal aggrandizement, growing out of personal vanity. But then the world knew nothing of Nina Darling's secret—which made all the difference.
For right judgment a few facts will not serve. Unless we have them all we are likely to fall into error. To argue from effect back to cause is a very risky undertaking. And that was what most people did in Nina Darling's case.
Young Gerald Andrews, of the civil service, the most recent victim, whom she had had in leading strings ever since he came to Simla, fancied her from the very first the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.