"I do," said the old lady. "It was Leycester himself. I am sure of it by the way he looked."
Lady Wyndward's white brow contracted for a moment.
"It is like him. He will do or dare anything for an hour's amusement. I ought to be angry with him!"
"Be as angry as you like, but don't let him know that you are," said the old lady, shrewdly.
Lady Wyndward understood.
"How beautiful Lenore looks to-night," she said, looking across the room where Lady Lenore stood fanning herself, her head thrown back, her eyes fixed on a picture.
"Yes," assented the old countess. "If I were a man I should not rest until I had won her; if I were a man—but then men are so different to what we imagine them. They turn aside from a garden lily to pluck a wayside flower——"
"But they come back to the lily," said Lady Wyndward, with a smile.
"Yes," muttered the old countess, suavely; "after they have grown tired of the wild flower and thrown it aside."
As she spoke the curtains were withdrawn and the gentlemen came sauntering in.