"Stop pretending to be stupid. When?"
"As soon as you like."
Later, seated at her dressing-table, adding those deft touches whose secret one woman in ten thousand knows, touches which lift an evening toilette out of the ruck of commonplace prettiness and render it wholly sorcerous, Lucinda caught in her mirror an odd look of dubious speculation on the face of the maid who waited by her shoulder.
Half an hour earlier such a look would have irritated, now its impertinence had no more effect than to make Lucinda smile illegibly at her image in the glass. What did it matter what questions might be taking form in that shallow mind? If Bel could afford to ignore the gossip of servants, that had its source in knowledge of his escapades no doubt infinitely more detailed and precise than she might ever hope or fear to gain—why, so could Bel's wife afford to go her own way and let this scandal-mongering world go hang.
Whether or not she could afford it, she meant henceforward to make her own life—as Bel did, as everybody did—and an end to this drifting with the winds of forlorn and fading hopes. She was too young, too proud, too richly warmed by ardent wine of life, to accept without a murmur affronts and slights such as were now her daily portion, without a struggle reconcile herself to the estate of the outworn wife, tolerated mainly as an ornamental prop to the dignity of the house of Druce.
Bel should learn....
Poised lightly before the cheval-glass for the final inspection from head to foot, she perceived that she had never made herself lovelier for Bel; and Dobbin's spontaneous tribute as she entered the drawing-room agreeably confirmed this judgment.
"Heavens, Cinda! how do you do it?"
"Like the way I look tonight?"
"Like! It's unfair, it's premeditated cruelty, monstrous! You ought to be ashamed of yourself to look like that to a man who's having a tough-enough fight with himself as it is."