“Tell me some more,” said Esmeralda. “They are all new to me, and I believe them, whatever Lord Selvaine may say.”
“There’s one about a wedding,” said Norman. “Ffoulkes tells it, and swears it’s true. It was a brother-officer of his, so he says, who, when the clergyman asked him whether he would take this woman for his wife, said, with an air of surprise:
“‘Why, that’s what I’ve come here for!’”
“Ffoulkes has an admirable memory,” murmured Lord Selvaine; but Esmeralda laughed, though the laugh was a very quiet one; for the word “wedding” jarred upon her. “You should edit a book of jokes and call it, ‘Ancient and Modern—Mostly Ancient,’ Norman,” said Lord Selvaine.
Norman passed from jokes to legitimate gossip, and kept Esmeralda amused, as he thought, until the ladies left the room; then he drank off a glass of wine and fell back in his chair, like an actor who has played his part for all he knows.
Lord Selvaine looked at him curiously.
“You have done very well, young man,” he said, quietly.
Norman started.
“Eh, what? I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing,” said Lord Selvaine. “I am not offended, though I have every reason to be, after what I have suffered.”