"Hey-day! what's the matter now?" says Madam, with a bonhommie completely thrown away. Miss Fitzgerald has given the reins to her mortification, and is prepared to hunt Olga to the death.
"I think it is disgraceful the license Mrs. Bohun allows her tongue," she says, angrily, still smarting under the speech she had goaded Olga into making her an hour ago. "We have just been talking about it. She says the most wounding things, and accuses people openly of thoughts and actions of which they would scorn to be guilty. And this, too, when her own actions are so hopelessly faulty, so sure to be animadverted upon by all decent people."
"Yes, yes, indeed," chimes in her mother, as in duty bound. Her voice is feeble, but her manner vicious.
"The shameful way in which she employs nasty unguents of all kinds, and tries by every artificial means to heighten any beauty she may possess, is too absurdly transparent not to be known by all the world," goes on the irate Bella. "Who run may read the rouge and veloutine that cover her face. And as for her lids, they are so blackened that they are positively dirty! Yet she pretends she has handsome eyes and lashes!"
"But, my dear, she may well lay claim to her lashes. All the [Egyptian] charcoal in the world could not make them long and curly. Nature is to be thanked for them."
"You can defend her if you like," says Bella, hysterically, "but to my mind her conduct is—is positively immoral. It is cheating the public into the belief that she has a skin when she hasn't."
"But I'm sure she has: we can all see it," says Madam O'Connor, somewhat bewildered by this sweeping remark.
"No, you can't. I defy you to see it, it is so covered with pastes and washes, and everything; she uses every art you can conceive."
"Well, supposing she does, what then?" says Madam, stoutly. She is dressed in black velvet and diamonds, and is looking twice as important and rather more good-humored than [usual]. "I see nothing in it. My grandmother always rouged,—put on patches as regularly as her gown. Every one did it in those days, I suppose. And quite right, too. Why shouldn't a woman make herself look as attractive as she can?"
"But the barefaced fashion in which she hunts down that wretched young Ronayne," says Mrs. Fitzgerald, "is dreadful! You can't defend that, Gertrude. I quite pity the poor lad,—drawn thus, against his will, into the toils of an enchantress." Mrs. Fitzgerald pauses after this ornate and strictly original speech, as if overcome by her own eloquence. "I think he should be warned," she goes on presently. "A woman like that should not be permitted to entrap a mere boy into a marriage he will regret all his life afterwards, by means of abominable coquetries and painted cheeks and eyes. It is horrible!"