‘Nothing; get away!’
‘Civil! But you will remember your promise about White’s?’
‘Ay! ay! I shall remember you when you are proposed.’
‘Here, here is a business!’ soliloquized the young Duke. ‘May Dacre! What a fool I have been! Shall I shoot myself through the head, or embrace her on the spot? Lord St. Jerome, too! He seems mightily pleased. And my family have been voting for two centuries to emancipate this fellow! Curse his grinning face! I am decidedly anti-Catholic. But then she is a Catholic! I will turn Papist. Ah! there is Lucy. I want a counsellor.’
He turned to his fellow-steward. ‘Oh, Lucy! such a woman! such an incident!’
‘What! the inimitable Miss Dacre, I suppose. Everybody speaking of her; wherever I go, one subject of conversation. Burlington wanting to waltz with her, Charles Annesley being introduced, and Lady Bloomerly decidedly of opinion that she is the finest creature in the county. Well, have you danced with her?’
‘Danced, my dear fellow! Do not speak to me.’
‘What is the matter?’
‘The most diabolical matter that you ever heard of.’
‘Well, well?’