She leaned back in her chair, and tapped restlessly with the end of the pen-staff on the morocco-covered table.
Dr. Grey looked down steadily and gravely into her provokingly defiant face, and replied very coldly,—
“Were I in your place, I think I should jealously guard my lips from the hasty utterance of sentiments that, if unfeigned, ought to bring a blush to every true woman’s cheek; for I fear that she who has no respect for her own sex bids fair to disgrace it.”
A scarlet wave rolled up from throat to temples, and the lurking yellow gleamed in her eyes, but the bend of her nostril and curve of her lips did not relax.
“Which is preferable, hypocrisy or irreverence?”
“Both are unpardonable, in a woman.”
“Where is your vast charity, Dr. Grey?”
“Busy in sheltering that lofty ideal of genuine female perfection 127 which you seem so pertinaciously ambitious to sully and degrade.”
“You are harsh, and scarcely courteous.”
“You will never find me less so when you vauntingly exhibit such mournful blemishes of character.”