“I’ll have a brougham round in ten minutes, my lord,” said the butler, but Lord Cecil declined it.
“I’d rather walk,” he said. “I like a stroll after dinner.”
The butler—more in sorrow than in anger—asked what time he should send the carriage, but Lord Cecil declined a conveyance for any part of the evening.
“I’ll walk back,” he said; “I rather like a stroll after the theatre,” and the butler, with a sigh of resignation, gave him up as a bad job.
As he walked along the lanes, fragrant with the breath of spring, a thought—a hope—flashed through his mind that he might, perhaps, see the girl in the theatre. He never asked himself what his object in seeking her might be; men seldom ask themselves such questions. Lord Cecil was not an altogether bad character. He was not a modern Lovelace in pursuit of his prey, by any means. He was not, in fact, a Lovelace at all. He had lived in a fast set—had been the star and centre of the crack regiment in which he had held a commission—had gone through the ordeal of London life as completely as most young men of title; but he had come out of it, if he could be said to have come out of it, not altogether unscathed, but not very badly burned or smirched.
The Nevilles had always been wild, and Lord Cecil had not been any tamer than his ancestors; but in all his wildness he had drawn the line. For women in general—for the sex, as a whole—he possessed a respect which had sometimes amused his less scrupulous companions.
He had overspent his allowance; lost large sums at baccarat and kindred games, turned night into day, risked his money and his neck at steeplechases, and generally, as his friends put it, played Old Harry, but no woman had, as yet, any indictment against him. He could truthfully declare, with the Frenchman, on his deathbed: “No woman can come to my grave and say that for want of heart I broke hers.”
To women he was always frank and gentle, and the women of his set adored him. If he had broken no hearts in the sterner sense of the word, he had all unwittingly caused many to ache, and many a belle of the London season had “given herself away” to Cissy Neville, as his intimate friends called him.
And now the marquis had intimated that he must marry Lady Grace. Lord Cecil thought of last night’s after-dinner conversation as he strolled along, tried to think of it gravely and seriously, but somehow he could not; all his thoughts flew, whether he would or would not, to the dark-haired, blue-eyed girl he had so nearly ridden over in the meadows. After all, he was not obliged to marry Lady Grace. The marquis could not compel him, and as for the money—— He shrugged his shoulders, and, having reached the theatre, put the subject from him.
It must be confessed that he followed the box-keeper to the private box he had taken with rather doubtful anticipations.