“Are you old?” said Esmeralda, with her appalling candor. “I shouldn’t have thought you were.”
Lord Selvaine laughed—it might almost be said that he chuckled.
“Why not?” he said, evidently amused.
Esmeralda surveyed him with her clear, grave eyes.
“Well, though your hair is gray, and there are so many little lines in your face, your eyes don’t look old, and you don’t look like an old man.”
He gave her a courtly little bow.
“However old my head may be, my heart is still young enough to feel grateful, Miss Chetwynde. And how can I show my gratitude? Can I tell you who some of the people are? They are strangers to you, I imagine?”
“Quite,” said Esmeralda. “You know them all, I suppose?”
“All,” he said, with the faintest shrug of his shoulders, as if he had added that he was also weary of them all; or as if they were puppets which had ceased to amuse him. “Ask me to tell you the names of any of them, and anything about them.”
Esmeralda glanced round.