"Not at all," said he, cheerfully. "Things are better for me than I thought. Roquemartine didn't recognize me, I'm sure, for if he had, he would have said so. He isn't a snob. But I rather hoped he would have forgotten. I came as a stranger, brought by a friend of his and mine, was here only for a meal (we were motoring then, too)—and it's three years ago."
"But the marquise?"
"She's a bran new one. I fancied I'd heard that the wife died. This one has the air of a bride, and I should say she's an American."
"Yes. She is. The maid who showed me my room told me. The other girl who came out of doors, is her sister. They're fearfully rich, it seems, and that young brute wants to marry her."
"Thank you for the descriptive adjective, my little partizan, but you're troubling yourself for me more than you need. I don't mind, really. It's all in a life-time, and I knew when I went in for this business, that I should have to take the rough with the smooth. I was down on my luck, and glad to get anything. What I have got is honest, and something that I know I can do well—something I enjoy, too; and I'm not going to let a vulgar young snob like that make me ashamed of myself, when I've nothing to be ashamed of."
"You ought to be proud of yourself, not ashamed!" I cried to him, trying to keep my eyes cold.
"Heaven knows there's little enough to be proud of. You'd see that, if I bored you with my history—and perhaps I will some day. But anyhow, I've nothing which I need to hide."
"As if I didn't know that! But Bertie hates you."
"I don't much blame him for that. In a way, the position in which we stand to each other is a kind of poetical justice. I don't blame myself, either, for I always did loathe a cad and Stokes is a cad par excellence. He visited, more or less on suffrance, at two or three houses where I used to go a good deal, in my palmy days. How he got asked, originally, I don't exactly know, for the people weren't a bit his sort; but money does a lot for a man in these days; and once in, he wasn't easy to get rid of. He had a crawling way with any one he hoped to squeeze any advantage out of—"
"I suppose he crawled to you then," I broke in.