“O! Your sister’s. So, she is the possessor of that masterpiece. Is it indeed so excellent?”
“None better, I dare to venture, in all the world.”
“My lord, you must let me hear you on it. So near the perfect achievement, and yet to fall short of it by a hair! ’Twas not to be endured. We must visit your sister, you and I together, and beg this favour of her kindness.”
Now, even the Court of the Restoration had its codes of etiquette—more particular, in some odd ways, than to-day’s—and among them was none which permitted a prince of the blood royal to condescend to social intercourse with a young married woman without danger to her reputation. Arran, to be sure, knew this well enough, shallow dandiprat as he was, and the slight qualm he felt over the proposition was evidence of a certain suspicion awakened in him for the first time. But it was faint, and no proof against his vanity. He was not so base as to design any deliberate treachery to his own flesh and blood; but his conscience was an indeterminate quantity, easily at the mercy of any plausible rascal. He considered, and decided that the inclusion of himself in the Duke’s suggestion was the surest proof that there could be no arrière pensée behind it. An intrigant, bent on some nefarious conquest, would not propose a brother to assist him in his purpose. He gave a little embarrassed laugh, nevertheless, and hung his foolish head.
“If your Highneth thinkth it worth your Highnetheth while,” he said.
“Worth, my lord, worth?” said the Duke warmly. “What is this genius of yours worth, if not the most perfect of mediums through which to give itself expression?”
“You are very good.”
“I am very impatient, and shall continue so, until we have given effect to this arrangement.”
CHAPTER XII
Little Lady Chesterfield sat in her private boudoir, looking out on a glowing section of the palace gardens. Thirty feet away a marble basin, shaped like a tazza, bubbled with a tiny jet of water; and on the rim of the basin, as if posed for a picture, sat a single peacock. Great white clouds loitered in a sapphire sky, a thousand flowers starred the beds, the box borders were lush with growth, and all between went a maze of little paths, frilled with green sweetness. It was an endearing prospect, spacious and peaceful, hardly ruffled by the murmurs of the great life in whose midmost it was cloistered; yet small consciousness of its tranquillity was apparent in the blue eyes whose introspective vision reflected only the mists and turbulence of a troubled heart.