Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/129

116 Only an Englishwoman could be guilty of such extravagance, such eccentricity, as to require two rooms. But as she was ready to pay handsomely for the extra room, madame could only shrug her shoulders and mentally ejaculate, "Quelle dróle de demoiselle!"

Not till then—not till she sat down alone in her apartment, after unpacking her boxes, and leant out of its upper-floor windows looking upon the tops of the trees—did she begin to feel the reaction consequent upon the shock she had sustained. She had been driven along for the last five days on a whirlwind of passion, of revolt and disgust at everything surrounding her, from which she had fled, and which she vowed never willingly to see again. She was only now conscious of the shock which her whole moral nature had sustained. She seemed to herself to be years older than a week ago. She had been a vain and foolish child then; had she not grown to be a hard and cynical woman in these few days? With the cruel wisdom which experience alone buys, she judged not only others, but herself. Her cheeks burned with shame when she remembered how quick she had been to believe Wybrowe's lying protestations. Ignorance of life could not excuse—in her own eyes, at least—the readiness to fancy herself in love with such a man—a man of whom she knew so little, and that little so discreditable. That he was more than commonly depraved she had now been made fully aware, but were there not many others to whom she, as a wretched heiress, would prove equally a target to let fly their poisoned arrows at? Her thoughts glanced at Lord Robert Elton. He was a type—perhaps a favourable one, but still a type—of what she must