CHAPTER XV.
“Elle a du chic; elle a positivement du chic,” said the Duchesse d’Avit to her friends, in her great astonishment at the appearance and manner of the daughter of the house.
“It’s easy to look chic when one’s got as good a figure as she has,” said one of the other ladies, rather crossly. “She does look like a well-bred person, I admit, but I dare say the cloven foot will show in some way or another.”
They all watched for it with curiosity, so far at least as they troubled themselves to notice her at all. But they failed to perceive it. They found that she rode extremely well, and played wonderfully well too, but no one got on with her. She was extraordinarily silent, and they could not divine that she held her tongue so obstinately because she feared every moment that some stinging word would escape her.
The week seemed to her a year. She could not see the comedy of the thing as Framlingham had advised her to do. She could only resent helplessly, censure mutely, despise unavailingly, and suffer secretly. She might have been some doomed queen, passing from the prison to the scaffold; and all the incessant chatter and laughter around her awoke no echo in her; it always sounded to her derisive, a mockery of the absurdity of William Massarene masquerading as a country gentleman. She had read a good deal of philosophy, but she could not practice any. The only tolerable moments of the day or night to her were when she was alone in her own rooms with a stray rough large dog of nondescript breed she had found and adopted.
“If you must have a filthy beast of that kind, why don’t you buy a decent bred one?” said her father. “They price ’em as high as a thousand guineas at the shows.”
“A dog who will sell for a thousand guineas,” she replied, “will never want friends as long as the world is of its present complexion.”
William Massarene swore an ugly oath.
“Why will you rile your father in that way?” said Margaret Massarene, as he left the room. “You know gold’s his god. And let me tell you, my dear, that if ye’d ever known what ’tis to want it, ye’d tell a different tale. You’ve never had to want nor to wait for naught, for when ye was little I never stinted ye. Your brothers had died of the hard life, and you’d come late when I could do more for ye. Your father’s a great man, my dear, and you should respect him, if there be failings as ye would change in him.”
“No doubt you are right, mother,” said her daughter humbly.