"Cheer up, Alex. I believe you're afraid of my cutting you out. But we shall be quite different styles, you know. I can't hope to be a beauty, so I shall go in for being chic. Hélène always says it pays in the long run. By the bye, Achille thought you were very pretty."
"How do you know?"
"He told me so."
"Nonsense! How could he? I was in the room the whole time."
"Oh, there are ways and means," retorted Barbara, tossing her head.
Alex would not gratify her by asking further questions. To her habitual fashion of ignoring slights until it became convenient to repay them, however, Barbara added now an impervious armour of self-satisfaction at the prospect of her approaching entry into the world.
She even, three months later, received with no other display of feeling than a rather contemptuous little laugh, the elaborately-worded lettre de faire part which announced the approaching marriage of Hélène de Métrancourt de la Hautefeuille to her cousin, Achille Marie de Villefranche.