"No? Mrs. Carrington, how unkind of you to dismiss me so completely from your thoughts! 'Never to mention my name!' It is horrible to picture oneself so totally forgotten."
"You could not surely hope to be always in my thoughts?" I answer, lightly.
Her ladyship flashes a sharp glance at us from her long dark eyes.
"I might not expect it, certainly; but I am not to be blamed if I cannot help hoping for anything so desirable."
"Vain hope!" return I saucily, "and a foolish one besides. Have you never heard that 'familiarity breeds contempt?' and that 'too much of anything is good for nothing?' Were I to keep you perpetually in my mind I might perhaps end by hating you."
"What an appalling idea!" murmurs Lady Blanche, softly, speaking in that peculiar tone of half-suppressed irony I so greatly detest. "Should anything so dreadful ever occur I doubt if Sir Mark would recover it."
"I don't suppose I should," replies Sir Mark, rather bluntly, as it seems to me, without turning his head in her direction.
There is a moment's rather awkward pause, and then her ladyship laughs lightly, and, crossing the room, sits down by Bebe Beatoun.
Her laugh is an unpleasant one, and jars upon me painfully. Her very manner of rising and leaving me alone with Sir Mark has something in it so full of insolent meaning that for the instant I hate her. She makes me feel I have said something foolish—something better left unsaid, though thoroughly unmeant. I color, bite my lip, and, without another word to my companion, who is looking black as night, I go out through the open window.
So for the second time the little thorn enters into my heart and pricks me gently. A seed is sown that bears, me bitter fruit.