“Violet!”
“That’s right, fly at me. I thought you would. Are you going to take him?”
In an elaborate drawing room in the rue François Premier the two women were having tea. Leilah, without replying, raised her cup.
Violet cocked an eye at her. “One would have thought that you had had enough of matrimony. But perhaps your intentions are not honourable.”
Leilah reddened. “Violet!” she again exclaimed.
“My dear,” Lady Silverstairs resumed, “remember that you are no longer in the States. England is the most hypocritical country in Europe. America is the most hypocritical country in the world. That is what we call progress. But France being old-fashioned and behind the times is not censorious. I admit, I used to be. But I am not censorious any longer. I am not because any such état d’âme while advanced is not becoming.
“I am an old married woman,” added the lady who was not twenty-two. “But if I were not, if for instance I were like you, free, independent and not a fright, and I had to choose between love and matrimony, it would not take me a moment to decide. Not one.”
Leilah put down her cup. “Of course it would not. If you had it to do again you would marry Silverstairs and you would marry for love. That is over for me, over forever.”
Narrowly, out of a corner of an eye, Violet considered her. “He was such a brute, was he?”
“Who? Gulian, do you mean?”