“And you?” she asked.
He smiled at her, and, after a moment of innocent seriousness, her lips wavered into an answering smile.
The Marquis, after taking tea with Neaera and satisfying himself that the lady was not planning immediate flight, strolled back to his hotel in a thoughtful mood. He enjoyed a little triumph over Mr. Blodwell and Sidmouth Vane at dinner; but this did not satisfy him. For almost the first time in his life, he felt the need of an adviser and confidant: he was afraid that he was going to make a fool of himself. Mr. Blodwell withdrew after dinner, to grapple with some papers which had pursued him, and the Marquis sat smoking a cigar on a seat with Vane, struggling against the impulse to trust that young man with his thoughts. Vane was placidly happy: the distant, hypothetical relations between himself and Neaera, the like of which his busy idle brain constructed around every attractive marriageable woman he met, had no power to disturb either his soul or his digestion. If it so fell out, it would be well; but he was conscious that the object would wring from him no very active exertions.
“Mrs. Witt expected to find George here, I suppose?” he asked, flicking the ash from his cigar.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Anything on there?”
“Nothing at all, my dear fellow,” replied the Marquis, with more confidence than he would have shown twelve hours before. “She knows he’s mad about little Laura Pocklington.”
“I’ll call on her to-morrow,” said Vane, with his usual air of gracious condescension.
“She’s living very quietly,” remarked the Marquis.