“So I have always heard,” said Lady Erpingham. “But of what description? was he very wild?”
“No, not exactly: there was a good deal of mystery about him: he saw very few English, and those were chiefly men who played high. He was said to have a great deal of learning and so forth.”
“Oh! then he was surrounded, I suppose, by those medalists and picture-sellers, and other impostors, who live upon such of our countrymen as think themselves blessed with a taste or afflicted with a genius,” said Lady Erpingham; who, having lived with the wits and orators of the time, had caught mechanically their way of rounding a period.
“Far from it!” returned the earl. “Godolphin is much too deep a fellow for that; he’s not easily taken in, I assure you. I confess I don’t like him the worse for that,” added the close noble. “But he lived with the Italian doctors and men of science; and encouraged, in particular, one strange fellow who affected sorcery, I fancy, or something very like it. Godolphin resided in a very lonely spot at Rome: and I believe laboratories, and caldrons, and all sorts of devilish things, were always at work there—at least so people said.”
“And yet,” said Constance, “you thought him too sensible to be easily taken in?”
“Indeed I do, Miss Vernon; and the proof of it is, that no man has less fortune or is made more of. He plays, it is true, but only occasionally; though as a player at games of skill—piquet, billiards, whist,—he has no equal, unless it be Saville. But then Saville, entre noun, is suspected of playing unfairly.”
“And you are quite sure,” said the placid Lady Erpingham, “that Mr. Godolphin is only indebted to skill for his success?”
Constance darted a glance of fire at the speaker.
“Why, faith, I believe so! No one ever accused him of a single shabby, or even suspicious trick; and indeed, as I said before, no one was ever more sought after in society, though he shuns it; and he’s devilish right, for it’s a cursed bore!”
“My dear Robert! at your age!” exclaimed the mother. “But,” continued the earl, turning to Constance,—“but, Miss Vernon, a man may have his weak point; and the cunning Italian may have hit on Godolphin’s, clever as he is in general; though, for my part, I will tell you frankly, I think he only encouraged him to mystify and perplex people, just to get talked of—vanity, in short. He’s a good-looking fellow that Godolphin—eh?” continued the earl, in the tone of a man who meant you to deny what he asserted.