“In this wise. Pauline went to the Newburg masked ball, and I went to bed. The next morning about noon I had occasion to speak to my lady about a large dressmaker’s bill that had just come in, and went to look for her up-stairs. To my surprise I found that she had not been home at all that night. Of course I rang for her maid, and asked if she knew where her mistress was; but Julie was evidently as ignorant of her whereabouts as I was. She fancied that my lady was ill, as she did not return, she said; but when we came to look about us we found that she had taken her jewel-case with her, which gave her absence rather a suspicious air.”
“And there was no letter?”
“Not until the second post, and then I was honored with a somewhat voluminous epistle informing me in the politest way possible that I was an unsympathetic brute, with whom it was impossible for a woman with any natural sensibility to be happy, and finally that she had found some one to really care for, and believed that the future would compensate for the past.”
“Confoundedly cool!” exclaimed Sir Lawrence, apparently more moved than the earl himself.
“Or, rather, well put. Women of Pauline’s caliber are always insolent, unless you make them fear you; and that sort of thing was never in my line.”
“With whom is she gone? Do you know?”
“Oh, yes! I saw it in the Court Chronicle. The man whom she thinks able to sympathize with a sensitive, tender creature is a Russian—Prince Czarski—and is married to a handsome Irish woman, whose husband, Jack O’Hara, was in your regiment, I believe.”
“Poor Norah! Her second venture was not a very fortunate one, then. What could she have been thinking of when she married that man?”
“Of pin-money, I suppose, like all women,” answered Lord Teignmouth cynically; “and from that point of view she has done very well. I heard yesterday that she has taken Lady Gorman’s house, in Mayfair, for the season; so that she must be pretty well provided for. Have you any soda and brandy in the house?” he concluded abruptly, as he leaned back in his chair and passed his hand over his damp forehead. “This sort of thing is very upsetting, even when you are a philosopher.”
Sir Lawrence rang, and ordered what he required; and when Lord Teignmouth had drunk off a tumbler of the mixture, he went on gravely: