Here Lord Ambert bent and whispered something into her ear. He was evidently urging her to refuse the insolent request of this nobody, this curate of a small country parish. But his words took no effect. Elfrida listened to them, nodded and smiled as if acquiescing, and then—-
"The fourteenth is a quadrille, for the sake of appeasing old Lady Saunders, I believe," said she, looking at the curate. "Will you have that dance—to sit it out with me?"
"Won't I!" said the curate enthusiastically, who had not long left Oxford, and who was wonderfully young in many ways.
"You promised that quadrille to me," said Ambert, frowning.
"Yes, I know. But as I never dance quadrilles—-" She paused and looked up at Ambert. "You see?"
"No, I don't," said he.
"Well I am sure Mr. Blount does," said Elfrida audaciously. "Now, remember, Mr. Blount, the fourteenth is ours."
Lord Ambert looked at him.
Really the audacity of this contemptible curate passed comprehension. To speak so to her, his—Ambert's—future wife. He frowned and bit his lip. That was the worst of marrying into the middle classes; they never know how to keep those beneath them in order.
Lord Ambert, holding her hand during her descent from the steps to the garden beneath, ventured a cold remonstrance.