"Any amount of it. Like 'Auburn,' it is the 'loveliest village of the plain.' But I can't say we are a very enterprising people. Sometimes it occurs to one of us to give a dinner-party, but no sooner do we issue the invitations than we sit down and repent bitterly; and on rare occasions we may have a ball, which means a drive of fourteen miles on a freezing night, and universal depression and sneezing for a week afterward. Perhaps the widow is wise in declining to have anything to do with our festive gatherings. I begin to think there is method in her madness."
"Miss Chesney doesn't agree with you," says Guy, casting a quick glance at Lilian: "she would go any distance to a ball, and dance from night till morning, and never know depression next day."
"Is that true, Miss Chesney?"
"Sir Guy says it is," replies Lilian, demurely.
"When I was young," says Lady Chetwoode, "I felt just like that. So long as the band played, so long I could dance, and without ever feeling fatigue. And provided he was of a good figure, and could dance well, I never much cared who my partner was, until I met your father. Dear me! how long ago it seems!"
"Not at all," says Cyril; "a mere reminiscence of yesterday. When I am an old gentleman, I shall make a point of never remembering anything that happened long ago, no matter how good it may have been."
"Perhaps you won't have anything good to remember," says Miss Lilian, provokingly.
"Guy, give Miss Chesney another glass of wine," says Cyril, promptly: "she is evidently feeling low."
"Sir Guy," says Miss Chesney, with equal promptitude, and a treacherous display of innocent curiosity, "when you were at Belmont last evening did you hear Miss Bellair say anything of a rather rude attack made upon her yesterday at the station by an ill-bred young man?"
"No," says Sir Guy, rather amazed.