The shot fell short. Telfer neither smiled nor looked annoyed, but answered, tranquilly,—
"Possibly; but my time is to come. When I own Torwood, ladies will be as kind to me as they are now to my father; for it is wonderful what a charm to renew youth, reform rakes, buy love, and make the Beast the Beauty, is 'un peu de poudre d'or,' in the eyes of the beau sexe."
The Tressillian flushed scarlet, but soon recovered herself.
"I have heard," she said, pulling her bouquet to pieces with impatience, "that when people look through smoked glass the very sun looks dusky, and so I suppose, through your own moral perceptions, you view those of others. You know what De la Fayette wrote to Madame de Sablé: 'Quelle corruption il faut avoir dans l'esprit pour être capable d'imaginer tout cela!'"
"It does not follow," answered Telfer, impassively. "De la Fayette was quite wrong. Suard was nearer the truth when he said that Rochefoucauld, 'a peint les hommes comme il les à vus. Il n'appartenait qu'à un homme d'une réputation bien pure et bien distinguée d'oser flétrir ainsi le principe de toutes les actions humaines.'"
"And Major Telfer is so unassailable himself that he can mount his pedestal and censure all weaker mortals," said Violet, sarcastically. "Your judgments are, perhaps, not always as infallible as the gods'."
"You are gone very wide of the original subject, Miss Tressillian," answered Telfer, coldly. "I was merely speaking of that common social fraud and falsehood, a mariage de convenance, which, as I shall never sin in that manner myself, I am at liberty to censure with the scorn I feel for it."
He looked hard at her as he spoke. The Tressillian's eyes answered the stare as haughtily.
"Some may not be all mariages de convenance that you choose to call such. It does not necessarily follow, because a girl marries a rich man, that she marries him for his money. There may be love in the case, but the world never gives her the grace of the doubt."
"What hardy hypocrisy," thought Telfer. "She'd actually try to persuade me to my face that she was in love with the poor old governor and his gout!"