“Wait, wait,” said Cecil rapidly, laying his hand on her shoulder, as she flung herself away. “My dear child, do not think me ungrateful. I know well enough I should be a dead man myself had it not been for your gallant assistance. Believe me, I thank you from my heart.”
“But you think me 'unsexed' all the same! I see, beau lion!”
The word had rankled in her; she could launch it now with telling reprisal.
He smiled; but he saw that this phrase, which she had overheard, had not alone incensed, but had wounded her.
“Well, a little, perhaps,” he said gently. “How should it be otherwise? And, for that matter, I have seen many a great lady look on and laugh her soft, cruel laughter, while the pheasants were falling by hundreds, or the stags being torn by the hounds. They called it 'sport,' but there was not much difference—in the mercy of it, at least—from your war. And they had not a tithe of your courage.”
The answer failed to conciliate her; there was an accent of compassion in it that ill-suited her pride, and a lack of admiration that was not less new and unwelcome.
“It was well for you that I was unsexed enough to be able to send an ounce of lead into a drunkard!” she pursued with immeasurable disdain. “If I had been like that dainty aristocrate down there—pardieu! It had been worse for you. I should have screamed, and fainted, and left you to be killed, while I made a tableau. Oh, ha! that is to be 'feminine,' is it not?”
“Where did you see that lady?” he asked in some surprise.
“Oh, I was there!” answered Cigarette, with a toss of her head southward to where the villa lay. “I went to see how you would keep your promise.”
“Well, you saw I kept it.”