“Oh, thank you—my whole life shall prove my gratitude for this preference.”
Rose beckoned Jacintha, and sent her with an excuse to Colonel Dujardin. She then turned with an air of mock submission to Edouard. “I am at monsieur’s ORDERS.”
Then this unhappy novice, being naturally good-natured, thanked her again and again for her condescension in setting his heart at rest. He proposed a walk, since his interference had lost her one. She yielded a cold assent. This vexed him, but he took it for granted it would wear off before the end of the walk. Edouard’s heart bounded, but he loved her too sincerely to be happy unless he could see her happy too; the malicious thing saw this, or perhaps knew it by instinct, and by means of this good feeling of his she revenged herself for his tyranny. She tortured him as only a woman can torture, and as even she can torture only a worthy man, and one who loves her. In the course of that short walk this inexperienced girl, strong in the instincts and inborn arts of her sex, drove pins and needles, needles and pins, of all sorts and sizes, through her lover’s heart.
She was everything by turns, except kind, and nothing for long together. She was peevish, she was ostentatiously patient and submissive, she was inattentive to her companion and seemingly wrapped up in contemplation of absent things and persons, the colonel to wit; she was dogged, repulsive, and cold; and she never was herself a single moment. They returned to the gate of the Pleasaunce. “Well, mademoiselle,” said Riviere very sadly, “that interloper might as well have been with us.”
“Of course he might, and you would have lost nothing by permitting me to be courteous to a guest and an invalid. If you had not played the tyrant, and taken the matter into your own hands, I should have found means to soothe your jeal—I mean your vanity; but you preferred to have your own way. Well, you have had it.”
“Yes, mademoiselle, you have given me a lesson; you have shown me how idle it is to attempt to force a young lady’s inclinations in anything.”
He bade her good-day, and went away sorrowful.
She cut Camille dead for the rest of the day.
Next morning, early, Edouard called expressly to see her. “Mademoiselle Rose,” said he, humbly, “I called to apologize for the ungentlemanly tone of my remonstrances yesterday.”
“Fiddle-dee,” said Rose. “Don’t do it again; that is the best apology.”