But
there was the risk--a twenty per cent risk, as she figured it out. She
talked to Edward as if she had been a solicitor with an estate to
sell--perfectly quietly and perfectly coldly without any inflections
in her voice. She did not want to be unkind to him; but she could
see no reason for being kind to him. She was a virtuous business
woman with a mother and two sisters and her own old age to be
provided comfortably for. She did not expect more than a five
years' further run. She was twenty-four and, as she said: "We
Spanish women are horrors at thirty." Edward swore that he would
provide for her for life if she would come to him and leave off
talking so horribly; but she only shrugged one shoulder slowly and
contemptuously. He tried to convince this woman, who, as he saw
it, had surrendered to him her virtue, that he regarded it as in any
case his duty to provide for her, and to cherish her and even to love
her--for life. In return for her sacrifice he would do that. In return,
again, for his honourable love she would listen for ever to the
accounts of his estate. That was how he figured it out.
She shrugged the same shoulder with the same gesture and held
out her left hand with the elbow at her side:
"Enfin, mon ami," she said, "put in this hand the price of that tiara
at Forli's or .
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