She had succeeded. She was making Jill laugh. She was happy, almost happy, in her triumph, if only for the fleeting moment.
'I suppose you are wicked,' said Jill. 'But you are certainly very charming. I can't get really angry with you.'
'Ah, that is what I like to hear! Let me be charming to you and I care not how wicked you may think me!—not even if you think me more wicked than I am! That may be so, you know. I may make myself out worse than the reality. Perhaps I am not really a murderess!'
'Oh, I don't mind your being a murderess—not one bit!' Jill assured her. 'It's not that sort of thing I mind.'
'Did I call you simple? Just now? When you were so displeased with me? You are simple; I repeat it. But you are also very shrewd, very wise and shrewd, my dear young friend. You are as well aware as the most sophisticated misanthrope that it is the large crimes of which we prefer to be thought capable, rather than the small, mean ones;—the crimes of the individual, not the crimes of the herd;—eh?'
'Yes. I suppose it's that,' Jill smiled, stirring her tea, for while she had listened to Madame de Lamouderie she had poured out tea for them both. The old lady had forgotten it in her absorption. 'It's nice, I suppose, to feel oneself a tiger, rather than a sheep.'
'Precisely. Think of me as a tigress. A lonely, sad old tigress, tamed by you,' said Madame de Lamouderie.
