“Ah, bah! you know very well what I mean.”
“No, dear Crescenz, I am not in the least angry,” whispered Hildegarde, with a gay laugh, as she entered the room where the others were just placing themselves at table. Hamilton looked up, and beheld her clear brow and cheerful smile with painful uncertainty; Madame Berger bent towards him, and whispered “You were right.”
“How? when?”
“She does not care a straw for you. I never believed it until to-day.”
Hamilton bit his lip, and slightly frowned.
“Oh, don’t be annoyed about it; you cannot expect to succeed with all the world, you know. I suppose, having nothing else to do here, you have given yourself some trouble to please her, and it is disagreeable to find one’s self mistaken; but you may remember I told you long ago that she would exact a kind of love which few men are capable of feeling; a sort of immaculate devotion not to be expected from your sex, now that the times of knighthood are passed. She will never, in these degenerate days, find anyone to love her as she imagines she deserves.”
“And yet,” said Hamilton, “she has so little personal vanity.”
“That I consider one of her greatest defects. What is a woman without personal vanity? Avoid during the rest of your life all who have not, at least, a moderate quantity of it; without it we are abnormous, unnatural, and it is impossible to know how to manage us.”
“You have really given me a great deal of information to-day,” said Hamilton, laughing; “a few walks with you, and I should become a perfect tactician.”
“If you choose, however, to try Hildegarde further,” said Madame Berger, “you must manage it yourself. She may think you now, for all I know, a victim to my arts and wiles, and more worthy of pity than anger.”