So I shall be the gainer. Sometimes she comes between four and
five o'clock, and I'll be kind and add you to the little set of
favorites I admit at that hour."
"Ah!" cried Raoul, "how the world judges; it calls you unkind."
"So I am when I need to be," she replied. "We must defend ourselves.
But your countess I adore; you will be contented with her; she is
charming. Your name will be the first engraved upon her heart with
that infantine joy that makes a lad cut the initials of his love on
the barks of trees."
Raoul was aware of the danger of such conversations, in which a
Parisian woman excels; he feared the marquise would extract some
admission from him which she would instantly turn into ridicule among
her friends. He therefore withdrew, prudently, as Lady Dudley entered.
"Well?" said the Englishwoman to the marquise, "how far have they
got?"
"They are madly in love; he has just told me so."
"I wish he were uglier," said Lady Dudley, with a viperish look at
Comte Felix. "In other respects he is just what I want him: the son of
a Jew broker who died a bankrupt soon after his marriage; but the
mother was a Catholic, and I am sorry to say she made a Christian of
the boy."
This origin, which Nathan thought carefully concealed, Lady Dudley had
just discovered, and she enjoyed by anticipation the pleasure she
should have in launching some terrible epigram against Vandenesse.
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