“Italy!” interrupted she, blushing still deeper. “Favancourt is now asking for a mission there—Naples is vacant.”
This time I succeeded in catching her eyes, but she hastily withdrew them, and we were both silent.
“Have you been to the Opera yet?” said she, with a voice full of all its habitual softness.
“You forget,” said I, smiling, “that I am an invalid: besides, I only arrived here last night.”
“Oh, I am sure that much will not fatigue you. The Duc de Blancard has given us his box while we stay here, and we shall always have a place for you; and I pray you to come; if not for the music, for my sake,” she added hastily: “for I own nothing can be possibly more stupid than our nightly visitors. I hear of nothing but ministerial intrigue, the tactics of the centre droit and the opposition, with a little very tiresome gossip of the Tuileries; and Favancourt thinks himself political, when he is only prosy. Now, I long for a little real chit-chat about London and our own people. Apropos, what became of Lady Frances Gunnington? did she really marry the young cornet of dragoons and sail for India?”
“The saddest is to be told: he was killed in the Punjaub, and she is now coming home a widow.”
“How very sad!—was she as pretty as they said?—handsomer than Lucy Fox I have heard!”
“I almost think so.”
“That is great praise from you, if there be any truth in on dits. Had not you a kind of tenderness in that quarter?”
“Me!”