He paused. Rosalie, surprised at his vehemence, but still half amused, inquired lightly:
‘Well, what do we do? Take care of it when we’ve got it, and do without it when we have n’t?’
‘Not always,’ he added; and this time there was no mistaking the deliberate insolence of his tone. ‘Sometimes a woman sells herself when she has n’t got it, and sometimes, mistrusting her own powers of management, she invites other people to take care of it for her.’
There was a dead silence for a moment. Richard, fixing his merciless gaze upon her face, saw the colour ebb from it, leaving the very lips white. His shot had struck home—he was glad of it.
‘What do you mean?’ said Rosalie at last, lifting her eyes, which she had involuntarily lowered, and looking at him steadily.
‘I think you must know what I mean,’ he returned, with a smile almost insulting in its contemptuousness.
‘Why should you attack me?’ she inquired, without flinching, though her large eyes looked pathetic in their surprise and pain.
‘Am I attacking you? I am merely stating facts. When a penniless young girl marries a prosperous old man one is bound to conclude that his money is the chief attraction, and when that same girl, finding herself a few years later rich and free, offers herself for the second time to a man forty years older than herself—’
‘Offers herself?’ cried Rosalie, turning upon him fiercely while the blood returned impetuously to her face; ‘how dare you say such an insulting thing to me?’
‘Is it not true?’ he inquired. ‘I have the statement on most excellent authority.’