"Oh! I dare say," says Lord Alfred. "Only that doesn't help me, you know, because I don't."
"Didn't know who you were, at first, Mrs. Branscombe," breaks in the duke. "Thought you were a little girl—eh?—eh?"—chuckling again. "Asked your husband who you were, and so on. I hope you are enjoying yourself. Seen everything, eh? The houses are pretty good this year."
"Lord Alfred has just shown them to me. They are quite too exquisite," says Georgie.
"And the lake, and my new swans?"
"No; not the swans."
"Dear me! why didn't he show you those? Finest birds I ever saw. My dear Mrs. Branscombe, you really must see them, you know."
"I should like to, if you will show them to me," says the little hypocrite, with the very faintest, but the most successful, emphasis on the pronoun, which is wine to the heart of the old beau; and, offering her his arm, he takes her across the lawn and through the shrubberies to the sheet of water beyond, that gleams sweet and cool through the foliage. As they go, the county turns to regard them; and men wonder who the pretty woman is the old fellow has picked up; and women wonder what on earth the duke can see in that silly little Mrs. Branscombe.
Sir James, who has been watching the duke's evident admiration for his pretty guest, is openly amused.
"Your training!" he says to Clarissa, over whose chair he is leaning. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself and your pupil. Such a disgraceful little coquette I never saw. I really pity that poor duchess: see there, how miserably unhappy she is looking, and how——er——pink."
"Don't be unkind: your hesitation was positively cruel. The word 'red' is unmistakably the word for the poor duchess to-day."