Marmaduke was a good deal shaken by this artful speech, but he rather felt than saw its falsehood. A shrug of the shoulders, and a slight incredulous laugh was all the answer he vouchsafed.
"There is this further difference," she pursued, "between the sexes. When a man has quarrelled with a woman—when he has deserted her or been deserted by her, he tramples down in his heart all former love, and replaces adoration with hate, or, at the least, with indifference."
"Very right too."
"Yes, you men think so. But how differently a woman feels! Under the same circumstances, whatever may have been prompted by her rage or her despair, the act upon which she had resolved once performed, her love returns with all its former force—returns and lives in her heart throughout the rest of her life. This is what I mean by our superiority in constancy. When once we love, it is for ever. No neglect, no ill-usage, no inconstancy can kill it. Weak and wayward, reckless and passionate as we are, we rush into wretched extremes, we do rash things when blinded by our tears, but do what we will, we cannot stifle the love that is in our hearts."
The little creature had risen and thrown back her golden locks with the graceful fury of a Pythoness, her eyes sparkled with an unwonted light, her nostrils were dilated, her whole frame seemed animated with passion, as she declaimed, rather than spoke, that vindication of herself in her sex.
I have said before that she had the nature of an actress. The present scene, therefore, was not only adapted to her histrionic display, but gave her such keen delight, that she could have pursued it for a long while, quite independent of any ulterior purpose, had not Marmaduke suddenly arrested her eloquence, by asking in a tone of subdued irony,—
"And am I expected to believe all this?"
She paused to fix a passionate look at him. Then, slowly drawing from her bosom a small locket, held it up to him, and said scornfully,—
"Do you recognise this?"
Before he had recovered from his astonishment, she had left the room.