"Do you know," he asked, starting from a reverie, "why Lord Randolph desires my company so especially at Uplands?"
"Cannot say," answered Vellumy, smiling, "unless it be to call your palette into requisition, to pourtway the beauties of his ladye-love."
"Lady Dora Vaughan?" asked the other in surprise. "I thought she had quitted Up—. Indeed, I know she has," he added hastily; "I saw her to-day."
"Not Lady Dowa," answered Vellumy, with a knowing smile. "Some one else he is vewy much in love with, a——" Up to the present moment he had been talking at random, just to divert Tremenhere's ideas from any thing singular in the summons the other had received. Some thread from the Parque's weaving surely, tangled round his shallow mind at this juncture, and drew him on, without thinking on his part, to add, by way of "fun:" "I don't know that I ought to tell you"—this was said confidentially—"but Gway is deucedly in love with some married woman, qwite a beauty, I hear."
"Indeed!" was the thoughtful, half painful reply, yet he could not tell where this information galled him.
"Oh yes!" continued the confidential Vellumy; "it is a recent affair—Gway is tewibly in love," he glanced smilingly at the thoughtful Tremenhere.
"Do you know her?" asked he.
"No, he's newer let me see her; it is quite a romantic affair, of wecent date."
"Married, you say?" inquired Tremenhere, trembling he scarcely knew why. "Then of course the passion is a hopeless one?"
"What an innocent you would make me think you!" laughed Vellumy. "Her husband, I hear, is a jealous cuwmudgeon; she's afwaid of her life of him, but, fwom all I hear, I should certainly say she loved Gway, and not a little."