“Of course there was something!” answered the Princesse impatiently, “Oh, mon Dieu!  Plus de sottises!  There always is something where Sylvie is, Mr. Leigh!  She cannot smile or sing, or turn her head, or raise her eyes, or smell a bunch of violets, without some one of your audacious sex conceiving the idea of making himself agreeable and indispensable to her.  And when she will not compromise herself—­ (is that not your convenient little phrase?)—­she is judged much more severely than if she had done so!  And do you know why?  Because you men can never endure defeat in love-matters!  You would rather spread abroad the rumour that you had conquered, than confess that your libertinism had been perceived and repulsed with indignation and scorn!  And I will tell you another thing if you do not know it.  In the frequent destruction of an innocent woman’s reputation. it is a rejected suitor who generally starts the first rumour and hands the lie over to debased women, knowing that they may be trusted to keep it up!”

Aubrey flushed, and winced under the lash of her cutting words.  “You are very cruel, Princesse!” he said, “Surely unnecessarily bitterly cruel!”

“Cher philosophe, I have loved!” she replied, “And that is why I am cruel.  I have loved and have been deceived in love,—­and that kind of thing often turns the most patient Griselda into an exceptionally fierce tiger-cat!  I am not quite a tiger-cat,—­but I confess I do not like one-sidedness in anything, Nature’s tendency being to equalise—­equalise—­till we are all flattened down into one level,—­ the grave!  At the present moment we are treading on a mixture of kings and saints and heroes,—­all one soil you see, and rather marshy,—­badly in need of draining at all times!” She laughed a little.  “Frankly, I assure you, it is to me the most deplorable arrangement that a true woman should be destined to give all the passion and love of her life to one man, while the same man scatters his worthless affections about like halfpence among dozens of drabs!  My dear Mr. Leigh, do not frown at me in that tragic way!  I am not blaming you!  I am not in the least inclined to put you in the general category,—­at least not at present.  You do not look like the ordinary man, though you may be for all that!  Expression is very deceptive!” She laughed again, then added, “Think of our sweet Angela, for instance!  Unless a merciful Providence intervenes, she will marry Florian Varillo,—­and no doubt he will make her invite Mademoiselle Pon-Pon to her house to dine and sleep!”

“She loves him!” said Aubrey simply.

“Yes, she loves him, because she deludes herself with the idea that he is worthy of love.  But if she were to find him out her whole soul would indignantly repulse him.  If she knew all I know of him, she would rather embrace the mildewy skeleton of San Carlo Borromeo, with the great jewels glistening in his ghastly eye-sockets, than the well-fed, fresh coloured Florian Varillo!”