“I know nothing of the lady or of the sources of the fortune she has broken up,” he replied, “so I cannot judge. But if she wishes to be at peace she has acted very wisely for herself.”
Mouse heard with an impatience which she could not conceal.
“Do you mean,” she asked point-blank, “that you would like to lose your fortune?”
“One must never say those things aloud, madame,” he replied. “For the boutade of a discontented moment may be repeated in print by these Paul Prys of the Press as the serious conviction of a lifetime.”
“How I loathe your diplomatic answers!” she thought, much irritated at her perpetual failure to entice him out of his habitual reserve. “One can’t talk at all unless one says what one thinks,” she answered impatiently.
He smiled slightly again.
“I should rather have supposed that the chief necessity in social intercourse was to successfully repress one’s sincerity: is it not so?”
“You are a very tantalizing person to talk to!” she said with a chagrin which was real.
“Why insist on talking to me then?” thought Vanderlin, and he let the conversation drop; it was too personal for his taste.
Her verdict, more or less softened, was the verdict of the world in general on Katherine Massarene’s action.