The hair dressing ceased because the maid could not manipulate the brush and express sufficient surprise at the same time.
“Heavens, Madame! What then would you call lively if this has been dull? I’m patriotic enough––or revengeful enough, perhaps––for any human sort of work; but you fairly frighten me sometimes the way you dash into things, and laughing at it all the time as if it was only a joke to you, just as you are doing this minute. You are harder than iron in some things and yet you look so delicately lovely––so like a beautiful flower––that every one loves you, and––”
“Every one? Oh, Louise, child, do you fancy, then, that you are the whole world?”
The maid lifted the hand of the mistress and touched it to her cheek.
“I don’t only love you, I worship you,” she murmured. “You took me when I was nothing, you trusted me, you taught me, you made a new woman of me. I wouldn’t ever mind slavery if I was your slave.”
“There, there, Louise;” and she laid her hand gently on the head of the girl who had sunk on the floor beside her. “We are all slaves, more or less, to something in this world. Our hearts arrange that without appeal to the law-makers.”
“All but yours,” said the maid, looking up at her fondly and half questioningly, “I don’t believe your heart is allowed to arrange anything for you. Your head does it all; that is why I say you are hard as iron in some things. I don’t honestly believe your heart is even in this cause you take such risks for. You think it over, decide it is wrong, and deliberately outstrip every one else in your endeavor to right it. That is all because you are very learned and very superior to the emotions of most people;” and she touched the hand of the Marquise caressingly. “That is how I have thought it all out; for I see that the motives others are moved by never touch you; the others––even the high officials––do not understand you, or only one did.”
Her listener had drifted from attention to the soft caressing tones of the one time Parisian figurante, whose devotion was so apparent and whose nature required a certain amount of demonstration. The Marquise had, from the first, comprehended her wonderfully well, and knew that back of those feminine, almost childish cravings for expression, there lived an affectionate nature too long debarred from worthy objects, and now absolutely adoring the one she deemed her benefactress; all the more adoring because of the courage and daring, that to her had a fascinating touch of masculinity 193 about it; no woman less masterful, nor less beautiful, could have held the pretty Kora so completely. The dramatic side of her nature was appealed to by the luxurious surroundings of the Marquise, and the delightful uncertainty, as each day’s curtain of dawn was lifted, whether she was to see comedy or tragedy enacted before the night fell. She had been audience to both, many times, since the Marquise had been her mistress.
Just now the mistress was in some perplexed quandary of her own, and gave little heed to the flattering opinions of the maid, and only aroused to the last remark at which she turned with questioning eyes, not entirely approving: