“No. I have not been there very lately; travelling about.”
“Have you seen Lady Montfort since your return?” asked the Colonel.
“I only returned on Saturday night. I go to Lady Montfort’s at Twickenham, this evening.”
“She has a delightful retreat,” said the Colonel. “But if she wish to avoid admiration, she should not make the banks of the river her favourite haunt. I know some romantic admirers, who, when she re-appears in the world, may be rival aspirants, and who have much taken to rowing since Lady Montfort has retired to Twickenham. They catch a glimpse of her, and return to boast of it. But they report that there is a young lady seen walking with her an extremely pretty one—who is she? People ask me—as if I knew everything.”
“A companion, I suppose,” said George, more and more confused. “But, pardon me, I must leave you now. Good-bye, uncle. Good day, Mr. Darrell.”
Darrell did not seem to observe George take leave, but walked on, his hat over his brows, lost in one of his frequent fits of abstracted gloom.
“If my nephew were not married,” said the Colonel, “I should regard his embarrassment with much suspicion—embarrassed at every point, from his travels about the country to the question of a young lady at Twickenham. I wonder who that young lady can be—not one of the Viponts, or I should have heard. Are there any young ladies on the Lyndsay side?—Eh, Darrell?”
“What do I care?—your head runs on young ladies,” answered Darrell, with peevish vivacity, as he stopped abruptly at Carr Vipont’s door.
“And your feet do not seem to run from them,” said the Colonel; and, with an ironical salute, walked away, while the expanding portals engulfed his friend.
As he sauntered up St. James’s Street, nodding towards the thronged windows of its various clubs, the Colonel suddenly encountered Lionel, and, taking the young gentleman’s arm, said: “If you are not very much occupied, will you waste half an hour on me?—I am going homewards.”