“I won’t,” I said, and I felt my eyes sparkle. She put up her hands as if to ward off an evil spirit, and she laughed again. “Well, you sha’n’t then! Only don’t flash those emeralds at me, they give me quivers all over!” “Would _you_ like to marry Malcolm?” I asked, and I sat down again. “Fancy being owned by that! Fancy seeing it every day! Fancy living with a person who never sees a joke from week’s end to week’s end. Oh!” “As for that”--and she puffed smoke--“husbands are a race apart--there are men, women, and husbands, and if they pay bills, and shoot big game in Africa, it is all one ought to ask of them; to be able to see jokes is superfluous. Mine is most inconvenient, because he generally adores me, and at best only leaves me for a three weeks’ cure at Homburg, and now and then a week in Paris, but Malcolm could be sent to the Rocky Mountains, and places like that, continuously; he is quite a sportsman.” “That is not my idea of a husband,” I said. “Well, what is your idea, Snake-girl?” “Why do you call me ‘Snake-girl?’” I asked. “I hate snakes.” She took her cigarette out of her mouth, and looked at me for some seconds. “Because you are so sinuous, there is not a stiff line about your movements--you are utterly wicked looking and attractive too, and un-English, and what in the world Aunt Katherine asked you here for, with those hideous girls, I can’t imagine. I would not have if my three angels were grown up, and like them.” Then she showed me the photographs of her three angels--they are pets. But my looks seemed to bother her, for she went back to the subject. “Where do you get them from? Was your mother some other nation?” I told her how poor mamma had been rather an accident, and was nobody much. “One could not tell, you see, she might have had any quaint creature beyond the grandparents--perhaps I am mixed with Red Indian, or nigger.” She looked at me searchingly. “No, you are not, you are Venetian--that is it--some wicked, beautiful friend of a Doge come to life again.” “I know I am wicked,” I said; “I am always told it, but I have not done anything yet, or had any fun out of it, and I do want to.” She laughed again. “Well, you must come to London with me when I leave here on Saturday, and we will see what we can do.” This sounded so nice, and yet I had a feeling that I wanted to refuse; if there had been a tone of patronage in her voice, I would have in a minute. We sat and talked a long time, and she did tell me some interesting things. The world, she assured me, was a delightful place if one could escape bores, and had a good cook and a few friends. After a while I left her, as she suddenly thought she would come down to luncheon. “I don’t think it would be safe, at the present stage, to leave you alone with Robert,” she said. I was angry. “I have promised not to play with him, is that not enough!” I exclaimed.