'No; she has too much intellect herself. She is a grande dame, but she is much more besides. She admires talent wherever she finds it; only she thinks that she finds very little.'
'There she is right enough; there is any quantity of mere facility, of mere imitativeness, in our time, but there is very little which deserves a higher name.'
'And you believe that Damaris Bérarde has more than mere talent?'
'Yes, I believe it. I may be wrong, but I have never been wrong in such judgments, though it seems pretentious to say so. It is because I believe that she has this, that I am anxious for the world to first hear of her in such a way that she may be spared the vulgar and tedious novitiate which is generally unavoidable before a dramatic career; and also I should like to command for her such an audience as may become a title of honour to her, and a protection against false tongues. It is inevitable that your name has been, or will be, associated with hers. Modern life is one huge glass-house. If she be first seen at your house, in your salons, calumny can scarcely attach to your friendship for her. Pardon me if I speak with too intimate a candour. If I said less, I should feel myself almost dragged into the base collusion of a Sir Pandarus.'
Othmar grew pale with anger; he was unaccustomed to familiarity, and the words seemed to him wanting in delicacy and in respect.
'You are very hopeful!' he said bitterly, 'and wonderfully trustful, my good friend, if you imagine that in the world we live in she would be secured from slander by being seen in my drawing-rooms. The only thing they would say, if they were in the mood to say anything, would be that I deceived my wife into facilitating my amours. Society is not so easily persuaded of innocence as you appear to think, whilst it is thoroughly persuaded of the Countess Othmar's indifference to myself!'
In the impulse of his anger he said what he would not have said in a cooler moment. He was greatly irritated at all which was implied in Rosselin's latest words, and the allusion to his wife's indifference to his actions escaped him almost involuntarily.
'I regret if I offend you,' said Rosselin, whose keen eyes read his feelings in his face. 'I say what it seems right to me to say. I know the world has always mauvaise langue, I know it as well as you can do, but there are limits to its impudence. I do not believe that the lowest knave of it all would ever dare to say that you passed any insult on your wife. It has been too well aware of your devotion to her. However, let us abandon my idea. We can find some other way, perhaps; the preparation I have given my pupil has been short, and perhaps immature. She can wait awhile without injury. You have said, I think, that she has means enough of her own to live on as she lives now?'
'She has means enough. Yes.'
'Without wasting her little substance? I suppose her grandfather did not leave her much?'