“Possibly those are just the people who feel things the most. Real suffering is generally quiet.”
She turned on him abruptly.
“Is that why you are so quiet now?”
“I cannot think why your ladyship will persist in attributing to me a secret sorrow or passion,” he retorted. “Do I look very Byronic?”
“No,” she answered readily; “but you see I have got quite into the way of looking upon every man I have seen with Gwen as one of her victims, and you have been very often with her of late.”
“So have half a dozen others. I suppose they were my companions in misfortune?”
“Don’t jest upon such a serious subject,” she said, with her malicious smile.
“Anyhow,” he observed, rising, “however hard hit I may be, I shall know it is not of any use appealing to your ladyship for sympathy—Lady Gwendolyn’s ‘victims’ seem to make excellent sport for you?”
“When they don’t bore me. You know it is too much to expect one woman to sit and listen to another’s praises for two or three hours together. That is occasionally my fate; and I must frankly confess that I dislike it extremely. If I were to show the least sign of weariness, I should be looked upon as a monster, for every one ought to enjoy the capitulation of Gwen’s marvelous perfections. Do you know I sometimes quite wish I were her mother; I suppose I should like all this vastly then, especially if they had the tact to refer now and then to my past triumphs, and insinuate that my daughter was just what I must have been at her age. But—you are surely going to stay to luncheon, Colonel Dacre? My husband won’t forgive me if I don’t keep you, and I am sure you would not like to be the cause of our first conjugal difference, would you?”
“Nothing would distress me more; but Lord Teignmouth is too just to lay my fault at your door.”