"I shouldn't be surprised if Portmaris never saw him again."
He saw Leslie start slightly, then a faint smile flashed over her face, a smile of perfect faith. Yorke not come back! She remembered his last word to her. I shall count every moment while I'm away from you, dearest, every moment till I am back with you.
"My cousin is rather erratic," said the duke, casually and indifferently. "He is a very nice fellow, good-hearted and the rest of it; but—well, a little fickle; at least, that's the character the ladies give him."
"Fickle," she said, smiling still.
"Y-es," he said, languidly. "What's that song in 'The Grand Duchess,' 'A butterfly flits from flower to flower?' One mustn't blame the butterfly, you know. 'It's its nature to,' as Dr. Watts says; and, like the butterfly, Yorke is what is called very susceptible. He is always falling in love——."
She moved slightly, and the smile died away from her lips; but the clear eyes met his steadily, unflinchingly.
"And, fortunately, falling out of it again. He's like the man in the play who was in the habit of proposing to some woman every day; and if she accepted him he rode off, and she saw him no more, and if she refused him he asked her to be a sister, an aunt, or something of that kind, and rode off just as easily."
She opened her lips slowly.
"I thought you were a friend of the Duke of Rothbury's, Mr. Temple?" she said, in a very low voice.