“No, really,” she was laughing, “it is not so in England. I quite admit that men make it a general accusation against us, as a sex, that we are ill-natured, unfair, pitiless, in judging one another. They say that when women get together, at every word a reputation dies; they say that as a savage proves his heroism by displaying in grim array the torn scalps of his enemies, so a woman thinks she proves her virtue by exhibiting the mangled reputations of her friends; they say—But there is no end to the witty impertinences and fag-ends of rhymes from Simonides to Pope, which they fling at us on this subject I have never heard men so eloquently satirical as when treating with utter scorn the idea that a woman can possibly elevate herself in the eyes of one of their sex by degrading, or suffering to be degraded, one of her own; and in their censure they are right—quite right; but wrong—quite wrong in attributing this, our worst propensity, to ill-nature and jealousy. Ignorance is the main cause: ignorance of ourselves and others.”
He laughed at her philosophy, and blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.
“I think, my dear madame, that you must be full of whims, comme disent les Anglais. A pretty woman like yourself always is,” he said in his marked foreign accent.
“And why not?” she inquired, for he had suddenly changed the channel of their conversation, and she much feared that he now intended to give her a réchauffé of his sentimental nonsense.
“Because you brought your friend to the duchess’s last night. I saw him. C’etait assez.”
“You are jealous—eh?”
“Not in the least, I assure you,” he answered quite coolly. “Only it is pretty folly on madame’s part—that is all.”
“Why folly? O la belle idée!”
“Madame’s amitiés are of course friendships,” he said, raising his dark eyebrows. “Nevertheless, she should be warned.”
“Of what?”