“She is quite good looking.”
“Better looking than me?”
“It is not the same style, mademoiselle.”
Mlle. de Thaller had stopped singing; but she had not left the piano. Half turned towards M. de Tregars, she ran her fingers listlessly over the keys, striking a note here and there, as if to punctuate her sentences.
“Ah, how nice!” she exclaimed, “and, above all, how gallant! Really, if you venture often on such declarations, mothers would be very wrong to trust you alone with their daughters.”
“You did not understand me right, mademoiselle.”
“Perfectly right, on the contrary. I asked you if I was better looking than Mlle. Favoral; and you replied to me, that it was not the same style.”
“It is because, mademoiselle, there is indeed no possible comparison between you, who are a wealthy heiress, and whose life is a perpetual enchantment, and a poor girl, very humble, and very modest, who rides in the omnibus, and who makes her dresses herself.”
A contemptuous smile contracted Mlle. Cesarine’s lips.
“Why not?” she interrupted. “Men have such funny tastes!”