"I've friends enough of your sort," she sobbed, "too many."
"But at least let me explain."
"Don't say any more, please—you've said enough. Good night, you must excuse me. I—I'm not myself," and touching her handkerchief to her eyes, with a great effort she controlled herself and left the conservatory.
CHAPTER XV
THE SECRETARY'S INTENTIONS
Roberts' Hall preserved the good old English custom concerning breakfast—which means that a rambling meal extended from eight to eleven in the morning—at which the butler served you with tea, or coffee and rolls, and you served yourself to the rest, from the cold cuts on the sideboard to the hot viands in copper vessels warmed by alcohol lamps. The cold cuts you had always with you, also the orange marmalade; as for the eggs and bacon, devilled kidneys, etc., their state was dependent on the taste of the guests who had preceded you, and your own ability as an early riser. You came down when you pleased, and ate your meal in solitary state or in any company that might happen to be present, which, if it proved to be congenial, made a very jolly, informal repast, and if it didn't,—well, that was fate, and you had to submit to it. Fate may be kind or it may not, sometimes it sets out to play ponderous practical jokes, which may include something nearly akin to a grim reality in the future for the persons involved.
This was probably the reason why Stanley, on his advent into the breakfast-room, found it tenanted by only one person, and that one, Lady Isabelle.
At the sight of her, the Secretary felt decidedly sheepish, because Miss Fitzgerald's tears and some subsequent hours of sleepless meditation thereon had convinced him that he was morally, if not actually, capable of all the weakness for which her Ladyship had upbraided him. He told himself that he owed a duty to the fair Belle, that he must save her from herself at all costs, even if it involved the sacrifice of his own future, that he had misjudged her cruelly, and that he was very, very sorry for her, and that, because he was conscience-stricken, he was certainly in love. Indeed he kept assuring himself with feverish insistence, that this must be the real article.
To Lady Isabelle, on the contrary, Stanley's deficiencies were almost lost sight of, in view of the disturbing suspicion that that young gentleman might be led to suppose that her well-meant interference in his affairs had proceeded from an undue regard for himself. A suspicion but a few hours old, and dating from an interview with the Marchioness, who, for some unknown reason, had suddenly assumed a totally different attitude towards the Secretary, and even tried to entrap her daughter into admitting that his attentions might mean something. This made Lady Isabelle most anxious to impress him with the fact that their friendship was purely platonic. Accordingly, to his intense surprise, she was exceedingly gracious, and chatted away all through breakfast in a charmingly easy, if somewhat feverish, manner, even condescending so far as to say something pleasant about Miss Fitzgerald. Under this treatment Stanley simply glowed, and opened out as much as he dared in the presence of the butler and two expressionless footmen, upon that lady's charms. He was a very young diplomat, as the reader will have noticed ere this, or he would not have continued to praise one lady to another; least of all at breakfast time, an hour when the temper of mortals is by no means certain. But in the pleasure of his subject he did not notice the scorn that was suggested by the curl of his vis-à-vis' lip.