"She's pretty, fascinating to
men, in fact a man's woman. To other women she is a cat. And she's by
nature as deceitful as all creatures of the cat tribe."
"Why take such a person for your heroine?" Angelo wanted to know.
"She's thrust upon us by the exigencies of the story. And, besides--why,
Angelo, if you could meet the girl as I see her in real life, you'd
admire her beyond anything! She would be exactly your style. You, being
a man, wouldn't know that she was deceitful and a cat."
"I'm sure I should know," he protested, with an involuntary glance at
Marie, so saintlike and virginal in her meekly fichued dress. "You've
just said that you considered me a good judge."
"Not of a woman's character, but of what ought to happen to the heroine
of our story in the end," Idina explained. "That's what I meant. You
must give us the end of the story. But I'll go on. The girl--our
heroine--comes upon the scene first at a convent-school in Scotland."
Idina paused for an instant, as if taking thought how to go on. The
faint creaking of the hammock chains abruptly ceased. Mary glanced
across at her friend, but Princess Della Robbia had stopped swinging
only to lean forward and stroke the beautiful Persian dog Miro, who had
come up the steps. She put an arm round his neck and bent her head over
him. Though he adored his master exclusively, he tolerated the new
member of the family, and yielded himself reservedly to her caress.
"It must be a coincidence about the convent," Mary told herself.
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