The other nodded, with a pretty display of white teeth and a shifting affectation that was extravagantly feminine. A dainty three-cornered hat was perched on her powdered hair, that was pulled up plainly and rolled over each temple in a silken ringlet. She had on a richly embroidered jacket with wide lapels; a rug was over her knees; and seated on it, fastened to her left wrist by a tiny golden chain, was a red monkey that chattered at the new-comer.
“Monsieur Edouard,” said she, caressing the insular barbarity of speech with her tongue, and her pet with fluttering finger-tips, “who have sold himself the birtheright to a dish of potage. Oh que si! mais si jeunesse savait! But I have heard of Monsieur Edouard; and also I have heard of Monsieur Paine.”
Her voice was as artificial as her manner. Playing on the alto, it would squeak occasionally like a greasy fiddle-bow. And her age, despite the smooth and rather expressionless contour of her features, might have been anything from thirty-five to sixty.
“But she has not wrinkles to cement and overlay,” thought Ned, “else would she never dare to laugh so boldly.”
He did not like the truculence of her eyes; nor, indeed, the whole air of rather professional effrontery that characterised her. Nevertheless there was that about her, about the atmosphere she seemed to exhale, that curiously confounded him.
“I have not the honour of an introduction,” he said, a little perplexed, “nor the right to return madame’s compliment—if, indeed, it was meant for one.”
“Not in the least,” she said, with an insolent laugh. “I have no applause for the héritier légitime that is a traitor to his trust.”
She sank back, toying with her little red-furred beast. My lord laughed acidly, but made no offer to enlighten or question his nephew.
“So you have returned,” he said only. “All the devil of it lies in that, and” (he scanned his young relative affrontingly) “in your unconverted vanity of blackguardism. Get up, Jepps.”
Ned laughed in perfect good-humour, as the curricle sped away.