It came in an irresistible cry, fierce, emotional, from the girl’s heart. She gasped after it, actually as if a spasm had rent it forth. Then she bent, and looked, with tumultuous irony, into the other’s face.
“Ay,” she said, “it’s beautiful enough—like a wax doll’s—as smooth and as hard, I warrant.” But neither the wit nor the passion in her could keep that mood. She stood up again. “I want my man,” she cried. “Give him back to me! I was the first with him!”
Yolande, pale and indignant, rose to her feet.
“What is the meaning of this?” she said. “I know nothing of you, nor of whom you are speaking.”
“I’m speaking,” cried the girl, “of him they call Cartouche. Ay, you may start. It’s a name should make you blush for love forsworn!”
Yolande made a swift movement, as if to summon aid. The girl intercepted her, fell at her feet, clung to her skirts.
“No, no. Don’t call. Let me speak. I’ll be good and quiet, I will, if you’ll only listen. I didn’t mean no impudence—not to such as you. O, lady!—for dear pity’s sake—hear me out!”
“Who are you?”
“I’ll tell you, though he kills me for it. I’m his woman—his kept woman. There, you’ll not think the worse of him for that. We count for little with the quality, when they come to marry—like a man’s brooch, or the buckles in his shoes. We were right enough as a fashion for yesterday; but to-day, when our turn’s over, ’tis bad taste even to speak of us. But there’s something different here, there is. O, my lady! you did ought to consider it before you rob me of him.”
Some terrible emotion, between loathing and pity, was struggling in Yolande’s heart as she looked down on the imploring figure. An instinctive horror in her fought against its own understanding—would not believe—temporised with the truth, speaking in a voice of shuddering pity,—