"You don't want to hear? you don't want
to have to think about that?"
"Have I a right to? You need n't justify yourself."
She turned upon him a moment the quickened light of her beautiful eyes,
then fell to musing again. "Is there not some novel or some play," she
asked at last, "in which some beautiful, wicked woman who has ensnared a
young man sees his father come to her and beg her to let him go?"
"Very likely," said Rowland. "I hope she consents."
"I forget. But tell me," she continued, "shall you consider--admitting
your proposition--that in ceasing to flirt with Mr. Hudson, so that
he may go about his business, I do something magnanimous, heroic,
sublime--something with a fine name like that?"
Rowland, elated with the prospect of gaining his point, was about
to reply that she would deserve the finest name in the world; but he
instantly suspected that this tone would not please her, and, besides,
it would not express his meaning.
"You do something I shall greatly respect," he contented himself with
saying.
She made no answer, and in a moment she beckoned to her maid.
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