“Mademoiselle must have been too pleasantly engaged to remember the hour,” said the other, with an easy pertness quite different from her ordinary manner.
More struck by the tone than by the words themselves, Kate turned a look of surprise on the speaker.
“It is so easy to forget one's self at Morlache's, they say,” added the girl, with a saucy smile; and although stung by the impertinence, Kate took no notice of the speech. “Mademoiselle will of course never wear that dress again,” said Nina, as she contemptuously threw from her the mud-stained and rain-spotted dress she had worn that morning. “We have a Basque proverb, Mademoiselle, about those who go out in a carriage and come back on foot.”
“Nina, what do you mean by these strange words and this still more strange manner?” asked Kate, with a haughtiness she had never before assumed towards the girl.
“I do not pretend to say that Mademoiselle has not the right to choose her confidantes, but the Principessa de San Martello and the Duchessa di Rivoli did not think me beneath their notice.”
“Nina, you are more unintelligible than ever,” cried Kate, who still, through all the dark mystery of her words, saw the lowering storm of coming peril.
“I may speak too plainly, too bluntly, Mademoiselle, but I can scarcely be reproached with equivocating; and I repeat that my former mistresses honored me with their secret confidence; and they did wisely, too, for I should have discovered everything of myself, and my discretion would not have been fettered by a compact.”
“But if I have no secrets,” said Kate, drawing herself up with a proud disdain, “and if I have no need either of the counsels or the discretion of my waiting-woman?”
“In that case,” said Nina, quietly, “Mademoiselle has only perilled herself for nothing. The young lady who leaves her carriage and her maid to pass three hours at Morlache's, and returns thence, on foot, after nightfall, may truly say she has no secrets, at least, so far as the city of Florence is concerned.”
“This is insolence that you never permitted yourself before,” said Kate, passionately.