‘As if I cared!’ cried Millicent, with scorn. ‘They are such fools! Just think of Ben Renton,--doing nothing, and losing his time, and never seeing through us all these months, and going on with his nonsense to me, as if I was one to understand it! And all because I’m rather pretty!’ she said with disgust. ‘It is enough to make one sick. I wonder I don’t hate them or despise them,--they are such fools!’
‘Millicent, you are out of temper,’ said Mrs. Tracy. ‘I wish you would not talk in that way. If anybody were to hear you----’
‘I wish they could all hear me!’ said Millicent, growing fiercer. ‘Let’s go and gamble at Homburg, mamma. I think I should like it I think I should be lucky. Do I care for a stupid man to come and mumble over my hands? Bah!’ cried Millicent, looking at her own white, rose-tipped fingers, which Ben Renton, in his passion, had kissed. She looked at them with a certain disgust; but it was not Ben who disgusted her. Perhaps in that sudden fit of sullenness and temper she was nearer the purer world than ever she had been before in her life. Other men would kiss those hands,--other voices would tell that same tale in her ear,--while she sat and smiled and considered whether the suitor was rich enough; and, oh, heaven! why was it all? Because she was rather pretty, and had no heart nor womanly soul in her,--and because they were such fools!
Something like this Millicent thought as she sat with her elbows on the table, leaning her head in her hands. It was not that any impulse in favour of her ‘sex’ moved her altogether unintellectual, unspeculative being. She did not care a straw for the sex. Women were not perhaps ‘such fools’ as men in this particular way. Beyond that she had never thought on the subject. ‘How nice it would be to have money of one’s own!’ she said; ‘how nice it would be to win it over a table with no trouble,--and have all the excitement in the bargain! And if one lost, one could always begin again; whereas with men,--I don’t believe I shall ever marry well,’ she said, suddenly. ‘If I marry at all it will be some adventurer who will take us in. Now, mamma, you’ll remember what I say; I feel sure of it in my heart.’
‘I never saw you in such a dreadful temper,’ said her mother. ‘Is it my fault that you go on at me? But I know what is the reason. You are in love with this fellow that has not a penny. I knew how it would be.’