“He’s gone to Ostend, I suppose.”
Lady Mary nodded.
“So foolish!” she declared. “He hasn’t a shilling in the world, and he never wins anything. He might just as well have come down here and made himself agreeable to Lois.”
“Matchmaking again?” Rochester asked.
She shook her head.
“What nonsense! Charlie is one of my favorite young men. I am not at all sure that I could spare him, even to Lois. But the poor boy must marry someone! I don’t see how else he is to live. By the bye, who is your protégé?”
Rochester, who was lounging in a low chair in his wife’s dressing-room, looked thoughtfully at the tip of his patent shoe.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he declared.
His wife frowned, a little impatiently.