"Have you the face to ask such a thing? It is madness: it is impiety. Sortez, sortez, au plus vite".
She drove him before her, and soon had him enclosed within the cordon.
Ginevra being, I suppose, tired with dancing, sought me out in my retreat. She threw herself on the bench beside me, and (a demonstration I could very well have dispensed with) cast her arms round my neck.
"Lucy Snowe! Lucy Snowe!" she cried in a somewhat sobbing voice, half hysterical.
"What in the world is the matter?" I drily said.
"How do I look—how do I look to-night?" she demanded.
"As usual," said I; "preposterously vain".
"Caustic creature! You never have a kind word for me; but in spite of you, and all other envious detractors, I know I am beautiful; I feel it, I see it—for there is a great looking-glass in the dressing-room, where I can view my shape from head to foot. Will you go with me now, and let us two stand before it?"
"I will, Miss Fanshawe: you shall be humored even to the top of your bent".
The dressing-room was very near, and we stepped in. Putting her arm through mine, she drew me to the mirror. Without resistance, or remonstrance, or remark, I stood and let her self-love have its feast and triumph: curious to see how much it could swallow—whether it was possible it could feed to satiety—whether any whisper of consideration for others could penetrate her heart, and moderate its vainglorious exultation.
Not at all. She turned me and herself round; she viewed us both on all sides; she smiled, she waved her curls, she retouched her sash, she spread her dress, and finally, letting go my arm, and curtsying with mock respect, she said:
"I would not be you for a kingdom".
The remark was too naïve to rouse anger; I merely said:
"Very good".
"And what would you give to be me?" she inquired.
"Not a bad sixpence—strange as it may sound," I replied. "You are but a poor creature".
"You don't think so in your heart".
"No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only occasionally turn you over in my brain".
