Upon my word, I don't know why I
submit to it! Though I am younger than you, sir, I feel a hundred years
older in experience--and yet--and yet--there is something about you--"
She broke off and again tapped the gravel impatiently with her foot.
"I have said nothing, Madame." Calvert was quiet and unsmiling.
"No, Monsieur, 'tis that I most object to--you keep silence, but your
eyes reprove me. Oh, I have seen you looking at me with that reproving
glance many times when you did not know I saw it! Am I to blame, sir,
for being of the great world of which you do not approve? Am I to be
rebuked--even silently--for coming here with Monsieur de St. Aulaire, by
_you_, Monsieur?" Suddenly she dropped her defiant tone and, leaning
against the edge of the marble basin, looked intently and silently at
the splashing water gleaming white in the moonlight.
"Can you not see?--Do you not understand, Monsieur?" she said at length,
hurriedly, and in a low voice. "Do not misjudge me. I have been brought
up in this court life, which is the life of intrigue and dissimulation
and wickedness--yes, wickedness! We know nothing else.
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