He raised his cold eyes to her lovely face.
“I am too old to commit mental suicide,” he said; “take Neville’s recommendation, and go, if you like, and be sorry for it.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“After all, I don’t think I could venture on it; it would be—forgive me, Lord Neville—too awful. And so you have come to Barton, Mr. Churchill. And from whence, pray?”
They talked together in this light, careless, half-indifferent blasé manner which is now—Heaven help us!—the fashion; and Lord Neville finished his lunch in silence.
“I promise nothing!” rang in his ears; “I promise nothing!” It was a strange answer. Most girls would have said: “Yes,” or glanced at him, so to speak, indignantly; but, “I promise nothing!” she had said, in her sweet, grave, penetrating voice. Would she come? And if she did, how much the happier would it be? What on earth had come to him, that he should be unable to think of anything but this lovely, bewitching girl, so beautiful in face and great in genius?
He woke with a start as the marquis rose, and bowed to Lady Grace, who was quitting the room.
“Come with me and smoke a cigar,” said Lord Neville to Spenser Churchill.
“Mr. Churchill will do nothing of the kind,” exclaimed Lady Grace, stopping and looking over her shoulder, not at his smiling face, but at the opposite wall. “How inconsiderate you are, Lord Neville; you forget that I am dying to hear all the latest news.”
“I thought you’d heard it all,” he said, with a smile.