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Interruption of his monologue, short of raising her voice to screaming pitch, was impossible to Madame de Vallorbes. But when he ceased she addressed him, and her lips were drawn away from her pretty teeth viciously. "Oh! you unspeakable idiot!" she said. "Have you no remnant of decency?"
Involuntarily Katherine followed him part way across the room. Richard looked full at his cousin, absorbed, rigid, an amazement of question in his eyes. Not a muscle of his face moved. But Madame de Vallorbes' absorption was less complete. She started slightly and half turned her head. "Ah! there is that dog again," she said. "What has brought him back? He hates me." "Damn the dog!"
For the preservation of local innocents, somebody ought to go and hoist danger signals." Miss St. Quentin, after just a moment's hesitation, followed her friend through the warm, bright hall to the door. Then Helen de Vallorbes turned to her. "Au revoir, dearest Honoria," she said, "and the sooner the better.
Julius March, as I told you, is much better qualified to." "Julius March, Julius March," Madame de Vallorbes broke in. "Do, I beseech you, dear Cousin Richard, leave him to the pious retirement of his study. Is he not middle-aged, and a priest into the bargain?" "Unquestionably," Dickie said. "But, pardon me, I don't quite see what that has to do with it."
In common justice did he not deserve villification? Therefore, partly out of revenge, partly in self-justification, she proceeded with increasing enthusiasm to show that to know M. de Vallorbes was a lamentably liberal education in all civilised iniquities.
It touched picture and statue, tall mirror, rich curtain, polished woodwork of chair and table, gleaming ebony and ivory cabinet. It touched Helen de Vallorbes' bright head and the strings of pearls twisted in her hair, her white neck, the swell of her bosom, and all that delicate wonder of needlework the Flanders' lace trimming her bodice.
Thereupon Madame de Vallorbes made a very naughty, little grimace and drummed with her finger-tips upon the table. "La! la!" she cried, "you're no better than all the rest. Commend me to a clever man for incapacity to apprehend what is patent to the intelligence of the most ordinary woman. Look about you." Helen sketched in their surroundings with a quick descriptive gesture.
So he turned to his correspondence again, taking another letter, at random, from the pile. And then, looking at the superscription, he turned somewhat sick. "MON CHER," wrote M. de Vallorbes, "My steward informs me that he has just received your draft for a quarter's rent of the villa. I thank you a thousand times for your admirable punctuality.
"In the street?" "It appears to me the two localities are synonymous morally." Madame de Vallorbes drew up. Rage almost choked her. M. Destournelle's words stung the more fiercely because the insinuation they contained was not justified by fact. They brought home to her her non-success in a certain direction. They called up visions of that unknown rival, to whom ah, how she hated the woman!
A letter to you from de Vallorbes." Once more she paused. "I excuse you of anything worse than negligence in omitting to destroy it. Misery knows no law, and I was miserable. I read it." Richard had listened with the same detachment, yet the same absorbed interest, with which he had watched her entrance.
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