“It is a great misfortune for her talent,” Madam de Bonnivet said, knitting her blonde brows just enough to let me know that I had struck home.
“I cannot agree with you, madam,” I replied this time with conviction. “Little Favier has not only adorable beauty, but she has a sort of genius too, and a charming heart and mind.”
“One would never suspect it from seeing her act,” she replied, “at least, in my opinion. But if so, it is worse still. Happiness has never yet inspired a writer. But I am sure this affair will not last long. Molan will find out that she has deceived him with a side scene with a member of the company and then——”
“You are wrongly informed about this poor girl, madam,” I interrupted more quickly than was absolutely polite. “She is very noble, very proud, and quite incapable of a mean action.”
“But that does not prevent her being kept by Molan,” she interrupted, “if my information is accurate, and eating up his author’s rights to the last sou.”
“Kept!” I cried. “No, madam, your information is very inaccurate. If she desired luxury she could have it. She has refused a house, horses, dresses, jewels, and all the things which tempt one in her position, to give herself where her heart is. She loves Jacques with a most sincere and beautiful attachment.”
“I pity her if you are right,” she said with a sneer; “for your friend is not much good.”
“He is my friend,” I replied with an aggressive dryness, “and I am original enough to defend my friends.”
“That is a reason why one should attack them all the more.” This pretty woman’s fine face expressed, as she made this commonplace observation, such detestable wickedness, and the conversation betrayed on her part such odious meanness and hatred, that my antipathy for her increased to hate, and I replied to her insolence by another—
“In the world in which you live, perhaps, madam, but not in our world where there are a few decent people.”