“A woman!—you, poor child!”
The other misconstrued her.
“Why not? We can’t pick and choose in our class. But we’re no more blind and deaf than you to what’s the best. Only, if we want it, we must pay. I was just a village girl, and him a gentleman. Don’t you blame him for it. I gave myself to him, and with my eyes open. We know the odds we take. They must marry some day. But to throw me over for you—you whose true love I’ve took and cared for at his bidding, and tried to nurse back into faith and hope of you that jilted him, while all the time you’ve been undermining me with my own! O, lady! haven’t you a heart? To hear him, that other, calling on your name! to know him dying there, and all for love of you, while you dally with this that’s mine!”
She broke down, and buried her face in her hands, weeping. And her listener! Through all that distorted outcry some passion of the truth must penetrate her. Cartouche! At first, only a sense of utter outrage in that name predominated. A libertine! unredeemed and irredeemable! a practising intriguant, even in the moment of his suit to her! That at least was clear. She hated herself for that one impulsive thrill of kindness towards him. This ruined life at his door! And he had dared to approach her with such a lie in his heart—to affect repentance—to—Ah! what was that—this thing which was worse than all?
She withdrew her skirts a little. Her hand was ice. Her words fell like snow-flakes, soft and cold.
“You are mistaken, girl. There is nothing—never has been, never could be, between myself and—and the gentleman you named.”
Molly looked up, amazement and incredulity in her eyes.
“Doesn’t he love you?” she said.
The little Marchesa swept her skirts away.
“Don’t touch me!” she whispered terribly. “I am soiled in seeing you, hearing you. The word is fouled upon your lips. O, my God! these vermin in Thine image! Am I like them? Have they the right to claim me to themselves?”