“If, as it is,” Christina continued in a moment, “you take a low view of me—no, you need n’t protest—I wonder what you would think if you knew certain things.”
“What things do you mean?”
“Well, for example, how I was brought up. I have had a horrible education. There must be some good in me, since I have perceived it, since I have turned and judged my circumstances.”
“My dear Miss Light!” Rowland murmured.
She gave a little, quick laugh. “You don’t want to hear? you don’t want to have to think about that?”
“Have I a right to? You need n’t justify yourself.”
She turned upon him a moment the quickened light of her beautiful eyes, then fell to musing again. “Is there not some novel or some play,” she asked at last, “in which some beautiful, wicked woman who has ensnared a young man sees his father come to her and beg her to let him go?”
“Very likely,” said Rowland. “I hope she consents.”
“I forget. But tell me,” she continued, “shall you consider—admitting your proposition—that in ceasing to flirt with Mr. Hudson, so that he may go about his business, I do something magnanimous, heroic, sublime—something with a fine name like that?”
Rowland, elated with the prospect of gaining his point, was about to reply that she would deserve the finest name in the world; but he instantly suspected that this tone would not please her, and, besides, it would not express his meaning.