“You asked General —— to marry you?” she says, with a point-blankness that would be pitiless, were there any question of a need for compassion.
But Féodorovna does not wince. “I did not put it quite so crudely as that!”—with a slightly superior smile. “I told him that I loved and reverenced him beyond all created beings, and that I was his to do what he willed with!”
“And he did not will to do anything?” replies Lavinia, brutally.
Her stinging speech scarcely raises the colour in Miss Prince’s faint cheeks.
“He treated me with the same perfect loyalty that I had treated him!”
Lavinia’s answer is impatiently to pull open her own fur collar, as if she were choking, and to repeat, half under her breath with a species of snort—
“Loyalty!”
The other girl sits slowly down upon the Aubusson hearthrug, taking her small knees into the embrace of her lengthy arms, and looking straight before her.
“Would you like to see his letter?”—lifting one hand towards the breast of her gown.
The indication of what delicate lodging has been provided for the hard-hearted hero’s missive adds vigour to Miss Carew’s emphatic negative.