“Giacomo is impossible—that's the fact; but it's no use saying so.”
“I know that,” said she, with a malicious twinkle of the eye. “The man who is so dexterous with rouge and pomatum cannot be spared. But can you tell me, Temple, why we came here? There was no earthly reason to quit a place that suited us perfectly because Lady Augusta Bramleigh wished to do us an impertinence.”
“Oh, but we ought to have been here six weeks ago. They are frantic at 'the Office' at our delay, and there will be a precious to-do about it in the House.”
“Culduff likes that. If he has moments that resemble happiness they are those when he is so palpably in the wrong that they would ruin any other man than himself.”
“Well, he has got one of them now, I can tell you.”
“Oh, I am aware of what you diplomatic people call great emergencies, critical conjunctures, and the like; but as Lord Watermore said the other evening, 'all your falls are like those in the circus—you always come down upon sawdust.'”
“There's precious little sawdust here. It's a case will make a tremendous noise in England. When a British subject has been ironed and—”
“Am I late? I shall be in despair, my Lady, if I have kept you waiting,” said Lord Culduff, entering in all the glory of red ribbon and Guelph, and with an unusually brilliant glow of youth and health in his features.
It was with a finished gallantry that he offered his arm; and his smile, as he led her to the dinner-room, was triumph itself. What a contrast to the moody discontent on her face; for she did not even affect to listen to his excuses, or bestow the slightest attention on his little flatteries and compliments. During the dinner Lord Culduff alone spoke. He was agreeable after his manner, which was certainly a very finished manner; and he gave little reminiscences of the last time he had been at Naples, and the people he had met, sketching their eccentricities and oddities most amusingly, for he was a master in those light touches of satire which deal with the ways of society, and, perhaps, to any one but his wife he would have been most entertaining and pleasant. She never deigned the very faintest recognition of what he said. She neither smiled when he was witty, nor looked shocked at his levities. Only once, when, by a direct appeal to her, silence was impossible, she said, with a marked spitefulness, “You are talking of something very long ago. I think I heard of that when I was a child.” There was a glow under his Lordship's rouge as he raised his glass to his lips, and an almost tremor in his voice when he spoke again.
“I 'm afraid you don't like Naples, my Lady?”