Still she sat, as if stupefied; then leaned forward, strangely quiet.
“You have opened my eyes, I think. This gentleman is your paramour, is he not?”
Fanchette was silent, hanging her head.
“Come, be bold, girl,” said the Infanta. “It is not your jealousy, is it, but the jealousy of that small and envious nature towards a nobility he can never reach that has bribed you to this baseness?” She leaned back, passing a hand across her forehead as if suddenly overcome. “That such as you,” she said, “should dare to sit in judgment on your betters.”
Some note of weariness, of shaken emotion, may have struck upon the acute intuitions of the culprit. She ceased crying, and, raising her head a little, dared a breathless retort:
“Not in judgment, but in sympathy, mademoiselle, since in imitating our betters we feel with them.”
“What is that you say?”
“No one should know better than your Highness how love intoxicates our reason.”
Isabella gazed at the speaker with eyes in which the indignation was slowly giving place to distress.
“Yes,” she said low.