"Have you said your say?" she asked, looking very pretty and good-humoured as she gave him both hands. "I'm sure you had lots of time, and the best of opportunities. Don't you think I'm very considerate?"
"More—very generous!"
"Come and see me soon. Whenever you like. With or without dear Blanche. She won't mind; I'm always at home, to either of you—or both."
Then she made a funny little curtsey, gave him one more smile, one sidelong sorrowful glance, with her hand on the door, and was gone.
Blanche's spirit rose to arms; every instinct of her sex urged her to resist this unconscionable freebooter, this lawless professor of piracy and annexation. After all, whether she cared for him or not, the General was her own property. And what right had this woman to come between mistress and servant, with her becks and leers, her smiles and wiles, and meretricious ways? She had never valued her lover higher than at the moment Mrs. Lushington left the room; but he destroyed his advantage, kicked down all his good fortune, by looking in Miss Douglas's face with an expression of slavish devotion, while he exclaimed—
"How different that woman is from you, Blanche. Surely, my queen, there is nobody like you in the world!"