Lady Rodney regards him curiously, trying to read his downcast face. Has the foolish boy at last been brought to see a flaw in his idol of clay?
Nicholas is looking angry. Jack, sinking into a chair near Violet, says, in a whisper, that "it is a beastly shame his mother cannot let Mona alone. She seems, by Jove! bent on turning Geoffrey against her."
"It is cruel," says Violet, with suppressed but ardent ire.
"If—if you loved a fellow, would anything turn you against him?" asks he, suddenly, looking her full in the face.
And she answers,—
"Nothing. Not all the talking in the wide world," with a brilliant blush, but with steady earnest eyes.
Nolly, mistrustful of Geoffrey's silence, goes up to him, and, laying his hands upon his shoulders, says, quietly,—
"Mrs. Geoffrey is incapable of making any mistake. How silent you are, old fellow!"
"Eh?" says Geoffrey, rousing himself and smiling genially. "A mistake? Oh, no. She never makes mistakes. I was thinking of something else. But she really ought to be in now, you know; she will catch her death of cold."
The utter want of suspicion in his tone drives Lady Rodney to open action. To do her justice, dislike to Mona has so warped her judgment that she almost believes in the evil she seeks to disseminate about her.