She was startled. She expected to find the girl looking sullen, angry, passionate; but the splendid face was only lighted by a gleam of intense scorn, the dark eyes flashing fire, the ruby lips curling and quivering with disdain. Pauline threw back her head with the old significant movement.
"Miss Hastings," she said, "I would not have sold myself as that girl has done for all the money and the highest rank in England."
"My dear Pauline, you must not, really, speak in that fashion. Lady Darrell undoubtedly loves her husband."
The look of scorn deepened.
"You know she does not. She is just twenty, and he is nearly sixty. What love—what sympathy can there be between them?"
"It is not really our business, my dear; we will not discuss it."
"Certainly not; but as you are always so hard upon what you call my world—the Bohemian world, where men and women speak the truth—it amuses me to find flaws in yours."
Miss Hastings looked troubled; but she knew it was better for the passionate torrent of words to be poured out to her. Pauline looked at her with that straight, clear, open, honest look before which all affectation fell.
"You tell me, Miss Hastings, that I am deficient in good-breeding—that I cannot take my proper place in your world because I do not conform to its ways and its maxims. You have proposed this lady to me as a model, and you would fain see me regulate all my thoughts and words by her. I would rather die than be like her! She may be thoroughly lady-like—I grant that she is so—but she has sold her youth, her beauty, her love, her life, for an old man's money and title. I, with all my brusquerie, as you call it, would have scorned such sale and barter."
"But, Pauline——" remonstrated Miss Hastings.