“No, I judge not,” she returned with a side glance at Mandeville. “But the services were not short, on the contrary I thought I should never hear the last amen. Mr. Turner’s voice is very agreeable,” she went on, in a rambling manner all her own, “it never interferes with your thoughts; not that I am considered as having any,” she interjected with another glance at their silent guest, “a woman in society with a reputation for taste in all matters connected with fashionable living, has no thoughts of course; business men with only one idea in their heads, that of making money, have more no doubt. Do you know, Edward,” she went on with sudden inconsequence, which was another trait of this amiable lady’s conversation, “that I have quite come to a conclusion in regard to the girl Philip Longtree is going to marry; she may be pretty, but she does not know how to dress. I wish you could have seen her to-night; she had on mauve with old gold trimmings. Now with one of her complexion—But I forget you haven’t seen her. Bertram, I think I shall give a German next month, will you come? Oh, Edward!” as if the thought had suddenly struck her, “Princess Louise is the sixth child of Queen Victoria; I asked Mr. Turner to-night. By the way, I wonder if it will be pleasant enough to take the horses out to-morrow? Bird has been obliging enough to get sick just in the height of the season, Mr. Mandeville. There are a thousand things I have got to do and I hate hired horses.” And with a petulant sigh she laid her prayer-book on the table and with a glance in the mirror near by, began pulling off her gloves in the slow and graceful fashion eminently in keeping with her every movement.
It was as if an atmosphere of worldliness had settled down upon this room sanctified a moment before by the utterances of a pure and noble love. Mr. Sylvester looked uneasy, while Bertram searched in vain for something to say.
“I seem to have brought a blight,” she suddenly murmured in an easy tone somewhat at variance with the glance of half veiled suspicion which she darted from under her heavy lids, at first one and then the other of the two gentlemen before her. “No, I will not sit,” she added as her husband offered her a chair. “I am tired almost to death and would retire immediately, but I interrupted you I believe in the utterance of some wise saying about matrimony. It is an interesting subject and I have a notion to hear what one so well qualified to speak in regard to it—” and here she made a slow, half lazy courtesy to her husband with a look that might mean anything from coquetry to defiance—“has to say to a young man like Mr. Mandeville.”
Edward Sylvester who was regarded as an autocrat among men, and who certainly was an acknowledged leader in any company he chose to enter, bowed his head before this anomalous glance with a gesture of something like submission.
“One is not called upon to repeat every inadvertent phrase he may utter,” said he. “Bertram was consulting me upon certain topics and—”
“You answered him in your own brilliant style,” she concluded. “What did you say?” she asked in another moment in a low unmoved tone which the final act of smoothing out her gloves on the table with hands delicate as white rose leaves but firm as marble, did not either hasten or retard.
“Oh if you insist,” he returned lightly, “and are willing to bear the reflection my unfortunate remark seems to cast upon the sex, I was merely observing to my nephew, that the man who centered all his hopes upon a woman’s faith, was liable to disappointment. Even if he succeeded in marrying her there were still possibilities of his repenting any great sacrifice made in her behalf.”
“Indeed!” and for once the delicate cheek flushed deeper than its rouge. “And why do you say this?” she inquired, dropping her coquettish manner and flashing upon them both, the haughty and implacable woman Bertram had always believed her to be, notwithstanding her vagaries and fashion.
“Because I have seen much of life outside my own house,” her husband replied with undiminished courtesy; “and feel bound to warn any young man of his probable fate, who thinks to find nothing but roses and felicity beyond the gates of fashionable marriage.”
“Ah then, it was on general principles you were speaking,” she remarked with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown too heavy for easy breathing. “I did not know; wives are so little apt to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience.” And she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.