Page:Arrow of Gold.djvu/217

 contempt for all human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with those straight, white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they were as beautifully smooth as her voice when she admitted: "That protection naturally is only partial.  There is the danger of her own self, poor girl.  She requires guidance."

I marvelled at the villainy of my tone as I spoke, but it was only assumed.

"I don't think she has done badly for herself, so far," I forced myself to say. "I suppose you know that she began life by herding the village goats."

In the course of that phrase I noticed her wince just the least bit. Oh, yes, she winced; but at the end of it she smiled easily.

"No, I didn't know. So she told you her story!  Oh, well, I suppose you are very good friends.  A goatherd--really?  In the fairy tale I believe the girl that marries the prince is--what is it?--a gardeuse d'oies.  And what a thing to drag out against a woman.  One might just as soon reproach any of them for coming unclothed into the world.  They all do, you know.  And then they become--what you will discover when you have lived longer, Monsieur George--for the most part futile creatures, without any sense of truth and beauty, drudges of all sorts, or else dolls to dress.  In a word--ordinary."

The implication of scorn in her tranquil manner was immense. It seemed to condemn all those that were not born in the Blunt connection. It was the perfect pride of Republican aristocracy, which has no gradations and knows no limit, and, as if created by the grace of God, thinks it