“I shall expect you to act as guide to what you have seen,” she said, with a smile that seemed to flash like a beam of light from her white face.
“I shall be most happy,” he responded.
“I think the country is at its best in the spring, and I am always glad to get a little while, a short breathing time, before the London season commences. Let me see, you are in the Two Hundred and Fifteenth, aren’t you, Captain Neville?”
“I was,” said Lord Cecil, with a momentary embarrassment, and a glance at the marble-like face at the head of the table. “I have retired.”
“What a pity!” she said, and her eyes seemed to take in, at a glance, his broad chest and stalwart limbs.
“Do you extend your sympathy to the army or to Lord Cecil?” asked the marquis, in a voice too smooth for the sneer which his question conveyed.
Lord Cecil’s eyes flashed, and his color rose, but he contained himself and smiled.
“Oh, for both, of course. Surely the commander-in-chief cannot afford to lose a good officer, and Lord Cecil must be sorry to leave the army.”
“No,” murmured the marquis. “I do not suppose the commander-in-chief can afford to lose a good officer. Lord Cecil must have been a great loss,” and his icy glance rested for a moment, without a spark of expression, upon the handsome face which had flushed again under his cruel taunt.
“The loss was all on my side, Lady Grace,” he managed to say, with a smile; “at any rate, the duke bears up wonderfully well.”