“That is your look out. I don’t want to make their acquaintance.”
“Why not? You put me in a rather awkward position, you know. They will think you very ungracious.”
“I don’t care what any maladroite of an English Miss thinks me. It is hers that is the clumsy bad-taste in interposing herself where she is not wanted. You put yourself in that position, and you may get out of it as you like.”
“Very well. You must behave as you please. Only, if I go, what will you do with yourself in the meantime?”
“O! You needn’t trouble about me. Fortunately there is one upon whom I can depend more confidently for my entertainment.”
“You mean Carabas, of course.”
“Yes, of course. He is not like a butterfly to be led away any moment by a new fancy.”
“Well, you ought to know—such an old friend, and his attachments tendrils of such slow growth.”
I laughed; but Fifine was remote from laughter. She got up in a very few minutes and left the table and the room, her head held high.
I was really placed in an uncomfortable position, and hard put to it, when I joined the ladies, to find excuses for my companion’s rudeness. Of course they must have adjudged her in their minds an ill-bred unpleasant young woman; but their tactful kindness sought only to spare my feelings the knowledge of theirs. I said something lamely about her shyness of strangers—for her refusal to be introduced must have been perfectly obvious to them—and I conveyed from her a fictitious message to the effect that she regretted not being able to come, but that she had already engaged herself to a short expedition with a M. Cabarus, an acquaintance of ours. It was not much, but it was more than she deserved, even though my manner, I am afraid, must have given my invention the lie, for I was plainly embarrassed, and as plainly incensed against the cause of my embarrassment. But the two ladies affected, with a much finer tact, a genuine sympathy with the subject of my excuses.