"Mr. Tremenhere is pleased to be facetious," answered Lady Dora, pettishly.
"Pardon me, I never was more serious. I am trying to convey to your mind how great my impatience would be; but you have interrupted, without hearing all I had to say. If fate and inclination together, had cast me upon the waters—we will say, for example, in a yacht—why, I would summon to my aid some fairy spell, and, like the peterel, run over the surface of the waters, from the blue Mediterranean to the dusky Seine, till I found myself, web-footed, and incapable of running thence, on the polished floors of your hotel!"
There is nothing more disagreeable than to have taken up a weapon to wound, and suddenly to find the point in your own bosom. She felt he was laughing at her.
"Mamma," she cried, "did Lady Lysson show you a letter she received to-day?"
"My love?" asked her mother, looking up from a book she had been perusing. Lady Dora repeated the question.
"Yes, his lordship wrote much pleased with his cruise."
"I trust Lord Randolph Gray is quite well?" inquired Tremenhere, with perfect composure. "Lady Lysson mentioned, in my presence, that he was shortly expected from Malta."
"Quite well!" ejaculated Lady Dora, amazed at his coolness; "but you are mistaken about his locality, Mr. Tremenhere; he was at Florence when she last heard from him."
"Indeed! Then," he continued, laughing, "I will sketch him as the peterel of my idea; shall I?"
"He will feel flattered, doubtless, at any notice from your pencil, Mr. Tremenhere," was her cold reply. Her mother was again deep in her book.