She sat down on a chair, near breaking it.
“Didn’t you?” she said, gathering the folds of her cloak about her. “Well, supposing you didn’t, what then? You ain’t goin’ to forego your principles for a sentiment like that—don’t tell me.”
“If you won’t believe me”—I murmured despairingly.
“Why look here, Madame Lavasse, or Please, or whatever your damned name is,” she said, shaking a hectoring finger at me, “one may help a girl, but a woman helps herself, which I make no bones of guessing you’ve managed to do pretty free. The question with you is whether Jacobinism or royalty is going to pay best; and if you’re proposin’ to change about and turn informer, no better moral than profit is at the bottom of your little game, I’ll vow. Well, I don’t say but in that case we’re open to treat; only I’ll ask you to drop the artless girl, which don’t sit well on you at your age, and talk with me like one woman of the world to another.”
I rose to my feet with a burning face.
“Go!” I said, with an imperious gesture; “insult me no more. Have I not suffered wrong and outrage enough, but my heart must be made the sport of every common”—
“Highty-tighty, miss!”
She rose in astonishment. For a moment she stood conning me, my quivering lips and heaving bosom. Then of a sudden she smiled.
“Well, perhaps”—she said. “There, I’ve a way of letting my tongue run away with me; but it’s no example for you to follow. I should have remembered the glass houses in the sayin’ before I twitted you with your past. Only for sure, Diana Please, it can never be said against me that I betrayed my love that betrayed me.”
My rage was all gone. I dropped my head, with a sad little cry. The sound of it brought her to my side.