“Heaven knows I don’t set myself above Hadria,” cried Algitha. “I have always looked up to her. Don’t you know how painful it is when people you respect do things beneath them?”
“Hadria will disappoint us all in some particular,” said Miss Du Prel. “She will not correspond exactly to anybody’s theory or standard, not even her own. It is a defect which gives her character a quality of the unexpected, that has for me, infinite attraction.”
Miss Du Prel had never shewn so much disposition to support Hadria’s conduct as now, when disapproval was general. She had a strong fellow-feeling for a woman who desired to use her power, and she was half disposed to regard her conduct as legitimate. At any rate, it was a temptation almost beyond one’s powers of resistance. If a woman might not do this, what, in heaven’s name, might she do? Was she not eternally referred to her woman’s influence, her woman’s kingdom? Surely a day’s somewhat murderous sport was allowable in that realm! After all, energy, ambition, nervous force, must have an outlet somewhere. Men could look after themselves. They had no mercy on women when they lay in their power. Why should a woman be so punctilious?
“Only the man is sure to get the best of it,” she added, bitterly. “He loses so little. It is a game where the odds are all on one side, and the conclusion foregone.”
Unexpectedly, the underwood behind the speakers was brushed aside and Hadria appeared before them. She looked perturbed.
“What is it? Why are you by yourself?”
“Oh, our party split up, long ago, into cliques, and we all became so select, that, at last, we reduced each clique to one member. Behold the very acme of selectness!” Hadria stood before them, in an attitude of hauteur.
“This sounds like evasion,” said Algitha.
“And if it were, what right have you to try to force me to tell what I do not volunteer?”
“True,” said her sister; “I beg your pardon.”