'Then you can conceive a friendship?'
'Yes, and a most tender one—and go where I may,' he added, coming rather to the point, as Margarita thought, 'I shall never forget the friendship I have conceived for you.'
'That emotion is not always a lasting one.'
'Why—how?' he asked.
'Because it often ends where—love begins,' she replied, with a laugh and a downcast smile.
Cecil felt his heart beat quicker.
'Oh, by Jove!' thought he, 'this sort of thing won't do—what must I say next? This is making awful running, and I have only been a fortnight here!'
But at that moment the countess, who had dropped asleep over her missal, awoke, and the conversation changed.
Truth to tell, Cecil was beginning to be somewhat scared, rather than flattered, by the brilliant œillades and rash speeches of Margarita. He did not quite understand the romantic impulses that came of her half-wild Servian blood, though partly tamed and tempered by a fashionable European education. She was totally unlike any other woman he had met before, and he could not determine to his own satisfaction whether she had conceived a secret fancy for him, or was only seeking to entangle him in a flirtation, for her own amusement, as she had perhaps entangled Mattei Guebhard and others before him.