"You are a vile woman! A vile, vile woman!"
To which Leoncia merely shrugged her shoulders, and said:
"You would better keep your parasol between you and the sun."
The Queen passed round in front of her, facing her and staring down at her w r ith woman's wrath compounded of such jealousy as to be speechless.
"Why?" Leoncia was the first to speak, after a long pause. "Why am I a vile woman?"
"Because you are a thief," the Queen flamed. "Because you are a stealer of men, yourself married. Because you are unfaithful to your husband in heart, at least, since more than that has so far been impossible."
"I have no husband," Leoncia answered quietly.
"Husband to be, then I thought you were to be married the day after our departure."
"I have no husband to be," Leoncia continued with the same quietness.
So swiftly tense did the other woman become that Leoncia idly thought of her as a tigress.