‘My dear Evelyn, you amaze me! Do with him? I? With your brother?—with Lord Geraldine? What should I do with him? Do you want me to make a good marriage for him? But you are there to preside over that; and, besides, he will make one himself—some day.’
‘Speak seriously for a moment,’ said Lady Brancepeth with impatience. ‘You are very clever, and are fond of demi-mots; I am a blunt, stupid woman, and so I like plain ones. It is two years since Geraldine has had any other thought than yourself. When will you be merciful and unmagnetise him?’
‘Does that depend on me?’ said the Princess Nadine, with a little laugh. ‘Do you want me to make a few passes in the air with my hand? I can do it if you wish, but I doubt the result.’
Lady Brancepeth made an impatient movement.
‘Poor Ralph is only one amongst many, I know, my dear; but for that very reason surely you might spare him? You do not care the least little atom about him——’
‘The least little! I am a Russian, but I do know that is not good English. I speak better English than you do.’
‘You do everything admirably well. You are the most intelligent as you are the most interesting woman that I know; but you are also the most heartless,’ answered Lady Brancepeth with some heat. ‘I am not a prude; I can understand temptation and the weakness that cedes to it; I can understand love and the force that it may exercise, and I can forgive even its follies; but your kind of coquetry I cannot forgive. It is the exercise of a merciless power which is as chill as a vivisector’s attitude before his victim. You have no sympathy or compassion; you have only a sort of cynical amusement in what you do; you make yourself the centre of a man’s life with no more effort than you use that fan; the man is nothing to you, nothing on earth; but you destroy all his peace, all his future——’
‘Dear Wilkes, do not be so tragic!’ murmured Princess Napraxine, with a little yawn. ‘I dislike tragedy; I never by any chance go to Perrin’s when they play one. If men are fond of me—as you say——’
‘As I say!’ ejaculated Lady Brancepeth.
‘As you say; it is merely because—as you wisely if ungrammatically observed—it is because I do not care the “least little atom” about any one of them. I should have exceedingly liked to care for Platon; it would have been something new; it would have agreed with my programme of life; it would have suited me in every way; but n’aime pas qui veut; who could care for Platon? Does anybody ever care for a good-natured, very big, and entirely uninteresting person who drinks brandy and grows bald?’