Léonie looked down, conscience-stricken, at the pieces of porcelain lying on the floor. “I do not behave like a lady,” she said. “I did not know it was Sèvres. It was very ugly.”
Fanny giggled. “Hideous, love! I’ve always hated it. But, ’pon rep, I thought you had learned to curb that dreadful temper of yours! I vow you’re as great a hoyden as ever you were twenty years ago. What did that odious creature say to make you so angry?”
Léonie said fiercely: “It is a trick, all of it, to make Dominique many that girl. She thought she could make me afraid, but it is I who will make her afraid! Dominique shall not marry that — that — salope!”
“Léonie!” gasped Fanny, clapping her hands over her ears. “How dare you?”
“She is!” raged her grace. “And that mother, she is nothing but an entremetteuse! Me, I know very well her type! And she will be my Dominique’s belle-mère, hein? No, and no, and no!”
Lady Fanny uncovered her ears. “Lord, my dear, don’t put yourself about! Vidal won’t want to marry the wench. But what of the scandal?”
“ Je m’en fiche!” said Léonie crudely.
“And pray will Justin agree with you? My dearest love, there’s been too much scandal attached to Vidal already, and you know it. I’ll wager my diamond necklet that woman meant her vulgar threats. She’ll create a stir, I know she will, and ’twill be monstrous disagreeable for all of us. I declare, it’s too bad of Vidal! Why, if there’s a word of truth in what that creature says — which, to be sure, I doubt, for I never heard such a rigmarole in my life — he did not even want the girl! And if you can think of anything in the world he did it for save to plague us I beg you will tell me!”
“John says, for revenge,” Léonie answered, looking troubled. “I have a very big fear he may be right.”
Lady Fanny’s china-blue eyes widened. “Good God, my dear, surely even Vidal would not be such a fiend?”