“Dear lady,” replied Prince Khris, “it seems incredible to properly constituted minds, but there are actually persons so disposed by nature that they only love once! It is a lamentable limitation of what was intended to be our most agreeable and varied pastime; but so it is. You know there are some persons who take everything seriously, and drink sparkling Moselle with a long face.”
“Perhaps they will re-marry each other? It is not against the law, I believe.”
“No; it is not against the law, probably because no lawmakers ever thought such a case possible.”
“How he dislikes them both!” she thought. “Perhaps because they didn’t give him enough money, or perhaps because they are maintaining him now.”
It seemed to her experienced mind that you would naturally hate anybody who maintained you.
“I heard of a boat upset beneath the terraces of Les Mouettes, of an intrepid sauvetage of your lovely little girl on your own fair shoulders,” murmured Prince Khris. “I hope the master of the château was grateful, but I doubt it; men of business are sceptical rather than impressionable. I hope you took no cold?”
“None whatever,” said Mouse crossly and curtly, for she felt herself dévinée, and this sensation is never soothing to the nerves.
“I am charmed to hear it. But is it true that you have an intention to render still richer than he is the singularly ungrateful person who is called the Christian Rothschild?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said sullenly; “and I don’t know what this man, Christian or Jew, can matter to you. He divorced your daughter.”
It was more than a rude thing, it was an ill-bred thing to say, and she knew that it was so; but her temper got the better of her prudence, as it had done in her interview with Beaumont.