control yourself, you must, indeed you must. Mademoiselle Candeille, I
beg of you to retire. ..."

But Candeille--well-schooled in the part she had to play--had no intention
of quitting the field of battle. The more wrathful and excited
Mademoiselle de Marny became the more insolent and triumphant waxed
the young actress' whole attitude. An ironical smile played round the
corners of her mouth, her almond-shaped eyes were half-closed,
regarding through dropping lashed the trembling figure of the young
impoverished aristocrat. Her head was thrown well back, in obvious
defiance of the social conventions, which should have forbidden a fracas
in Lady Blakeney's hospitable house, and her fingers provocatively toyed
with the diamond necklace which glittered and sparkled round her throat.

She had no need to repeat the words of a well-learnt part: her own wit,
her own emotions and feelings helped her to act just as her employer
would have wished her to do. Her native vulgarity helped her to assume
the very bearing which he would have desired. In fact, at this moment
Desiree Candeille had forgotten everything save the immediate present: a
more than contemptuous snub from one of those penniless aristocrats,
who had rendered her own sojourn in London so unpleasant and
unsuccessful.

She had suffered from these snubs before, but had never had the chance
of forcing an esclandre, as a result of her own humiliation. That spirit of
hatred for the rich and idle classes, which was so characteristic of
revolutionary France, was alive and hot within her: she had never had an
opportunity--she, the humble fugitive actress from a minor Paris theatre--
to retort with forcible taunts to the ironical remarks made at and before
her by the various poverty-stricken but haughty emigres who swarmed in