“What!”
“Yes, yes—the King despite; and out of favour, by the token—she and her father—and retired to her own villa in the Via della Zecca, while Paris has taken his outraged heart to Allobrox, there to vent its dudgeon in our suppression.”
“We’ll see to that. A fine Prefect! Worthy of such a Priam! But, for the other—she has not refused him, I say.”
“She has, indeed.”
“Yet he proposed for her?”
“That’s certain.”
“And enough for me. Acute Sempronius, thou little wise and worming man! We’ll have thee on the Council some day. Now, go; I have my cue. Refused him, has she? Well, he’ll be gone indefinitely—and time to act. Vale, Sempronius!”
CHAPTER XI
Molly Bramble was, and had always been, within the pale of her social limitations, a perfectly good girl, sweet, modest and wholesome. Child of a class rather prone, in its maternal admonitions, to awaken a precocious curiosity as to the signs and indications which distinguish the bad male fruit from the good, to put its virgins on their guard against suggestion by suggesting, she was even a little remarkable for her artless pudency. As maid and milkmaid she had invited no offence, guarded her bosom from so little as a sun-ray’s wanton kissing, cherished her sweet honour, jealously but simply, within the bounds her state prescribed.
But she had had no arts to negotiate it beyond these, and, when the ordeal came, and she heard it called a lovely superstition by lips adorable in seduction, her innocence must yield it, for the archaism it was pronounced, to that bright masterful intelligence.