“Have you stated to anyone the object of your journey?”
“Only to one person—an intimate woman friend who lent me the money for my travelling expenses.”
“I see!” And Dimitrius smiled benevolently. “You have not explained yourself or your intentions to any good Genevese hotel proprietor?”
She looked up in quick surprise.
“No, indeed!”
“Wise woman!” Here Dimitrius drew up a chair opposite to her and sat down. “My experience has occasionally shown me that lone ladies arriving in a strange town and strange hotel, throw themselves, so to speak, on the bosom of the book-keeper or the landlady, and to her impart their whole business. It is a mistake!—an error of confiding innocence—but it is often made. You have not made it,—and that is well! You have never married?”
Diana coloured—then answered with gentleness:
“No. I am what is called a spinster,—an old maid.”
“The first is by far the prettiest name,” said Dimitrius. “It evokes a charming vision of olden time when women sat at their spinning wheels, each one waiting for Faust, à la Marguerite, unaware of the Devil behind him! ‘Old maid’ is a coarse English term,—there are coarse English terms! and much as I adore England and the English, I entirely disapprove of their ‘horseplay’ on women! No doubt you know what I mean?”
“I think I do,” replied Diana, slowly. “It is that when a woman is neither a man’s bound slave nor his purchased toy, she is turned into a jest.”