"Love was good when we were young, Mordryn; ten or twelve years do not matter when a man is twenty-five and a woman thirty-five to thirty-eight—that is, if they are not married. The discrepancy in age only becomes grotesque later. We loved and laughed and lived then, and should be grateful—I am—As for you, you will love again—fifty-three for a man is nothing. You are abominably attractive, you know, Mordryn, with your weary, aloof air—and your Dukedom—And now that you are altogether free from anxieties, you should take the cup of joy in both hands and quaff it—Look round the table. Have I not provided some sweet creatures for you?"
"You have indeed—Which one in particular have you destined for the cup-bearer?"
"Any one of the three on that side towards the top. You can't have brains and beauty. Lily Trevelyan has beauty, and enough tact to hide her absence of brain. Blanche Montague has no beauty but a certain chic—and I am told wonderful variety of talent. She does not satiate her admirers with sameness—While Julia Scarrisbrooke is all passion so well assumed as to be better than the real article, and always handy. These credentials I have collected from a cohort of past admirers and they can be vouched for. You have only to choose. Any one of them will be enchanted. They are only waiting to spring into your arms!"
"I believe that would bore me. I want someone who is not enchanted—someone who leaves the whole initiative to me."
Her Ladyship cast up her eyes. "My dear Mordryn, your unsophistication pains me! Who ever heard of a Duke of fifty-three, well preserved, good-looking, unmarried and distinguished—known to be generous as a lover and full of charm—being allowed to take the initiative with women—Fie!"
The Duke laughed, and by some curious turn of fancy he seemed to see the white, perfectly composed face of the stately, slender secretary, who had treated him as naught that night at Gerard's, and then looked almost mockingly respectful when she called him "Your Grace!" in the station. Would she be in the drawing-room after dinner?—Perhaps.
Yes, she was, over by the piano at the far end; but Lily Trevelyan and Blanche Montague and Julia Scarrisbrooke had surrounded him before he could get half-way down the long room, and escape was out of the question. No manœuvring enabled him to break free of them. So he had to sit and be purred at, and see with the tail of his eye a graceful creature in black talking quietly (and intelligently he felt sure) to some less important guest—and then playing accompaniments—and then slipping away through a door at that end, presumably to bed.
He cursed civilisation, he profoundly cursed beautiful ladies, and he became sarcastic and caused Julia and Lily who were for the moment bosom friends to confide to each other, over the latter's bedroom fire, that Mordryn was "too darling for words" but spiteful as Her Ladyship's black cat.
"I do hate men to be so clever—don't you, Lil? One never knows where one is, with them."
"Oh! but Ju, dearest, he isn't deformed or deadly dull or diseased, or tipsy, he is awfully good looking and very rich and a Duke—Really you can't have everything. I thought Blanche Montague was shockingly open in her desire to secure him, did not you? I wonder why Sarah asked her here with us!"