Doris swung her thick hair over her shoulders, and looked down at Lady Despard’s pensive face with a smile.
“That’s ‘spoke sarcastic,’ as Artemus Ward would say,” she said. “I ‘my lady’! Plain ‘Mrs.’ will suit me better than anything grander, I think.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said Lady Despard; “but it can’t be helped now, and, after all, one is none the happier for a title; and I do hope you will be happy, dear! You deserve it so very much,” and she put her arm round the slim waist and kissed her.
Doris slept little that night. The white, haggard face of the old man haunted her, and, strangely enough, the frank, handsome one of Lord Cecil, in all its bravery of youth and strength, mingled with it in an inextricable fashion.
At breakfast Percy Levant was still in a bright humor, and jested even about their visit to the marquis.
“Not content with playing the Lady Charitable herself, you see, Lady Despard, Doris must needs make a district visitor of me! What part do I take now? Am I to carry the basket with the tea and tracts, or what? Perhaps, when you get there, the marquis will have forgotten your existence.”
“I am quite sure he is too gallant to do that,” interrupted Lady Despard.
“Or perhaps he will regard my presence as an intrusion, and order me to be cast into the deepest dungeon. Anyway, I suppose we have got to chance it, so put on your things, Doris, and let us get it over.”
Doris filled a basket with some flowers, and a bunch of grapes—“just to keep up the character,” Percy Levant remarked—and the valet received them in the villa with an air of respectful gratitude.
“His lordship has been inquiring for you all the morning, miss,” he said. “He has spoken of nothing else, scarcely,” he said, as he led them upstairs.