Lady Eleanor pulled her horse up beside the railing, as Finetta had done, and smiled down upon Yorke. She had a beautiful smile which, beginning in her brown eyes, spread over her face to her lips, the well-formed, cleanly cut lips, which more than anything else gave her countenance the patrician look for which Finetta—and others—hated her. And she did not smile too often.
"Well, Yorke," she said, and her voice was low and clear, and sweet, with just a touch of languid hauteur in it that was also aristocratic. "What a lovely day. Why aren't you riding?"
She didn't ask him, as Finetta had done, where he had been. That would have been a mistake which Lady Eleanor was far too wise to make.
"Horse is lame," he said.
"Oh, what a pity!" she exclaimed, nodding to some friends who were passing. "Just when you want him, too."
"Yes," he said, "though I am going to sell him."
She turned her eyes upon him, and raised her brown eyes with a faint surprise.
"Going to sell Peter! I thought he suited you so well."
He nodded, and laughed rather uneasily. The announcement that he intended to sell his horse had been a slip of the tongue.
"Oh, he suits me well enough, but I shall sell him all the same. What a lot of people there are here to-day."