'
'Ah!' said Kitty, with a bitter smile, 'do I not know you too well,
as the man who promised me marriage and then broke his word? You
forgot all your vows to me.'
'My dear child,' replied Gaston leisurely, leaning up against the
mantelpiece, 'if you had read Balzac you would discover that he
says, "Life would be intolerable without a certain amount of
forgetting." I must say,' smiling, 'I agree with the novelist.'
Kitty looked at him as he stood there cool and complacent, and threw
herself back into the chair angrily.
'Just the same,' she muttered restlessly, 'just the same.'
'Of course,' replied Vandeloup, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
'You have only been away from me six weeks, and it takes longer than
that to alter any one. By the way,' he went on smoothly, 'how have
you been all this time? I have no doubt your tour has been as
adventurous as that of Gil Bias.'
'No, it has not,' replied Kitty, clenching her hands. 'You never
cared what became of me, and had not Mr Wopples met me in the street
on that fearful night, God knows where I would have been now.'
'I can tell you,' said Gaston, coolly, taking a seat. 'With me. You
would have soon got tired of the poverty of the streets, and come
back to your cage.'
'My cage, indeed!' she echoed, bitterly, tapping the ground with her
foot. 'Yes, a cage, though it was a gilded one.
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