Lady Belgrade was presiding over the tea urn.
Salome, who was seated near her, looked up and saw him. Again the marquis noted the sudden, beautiful lighting up of those soft, gray eyes, as they were lifted for a moment to his face. Again they fell beneath his glance, as her pale cheeks flushed up. He could not be mistaken. This sweet girl whom he loved, loved him in return.
"I was just about to send for you. You lingered long at table, Sir Lemuel," said Lady Belgrade, as the two gentlemen bowed and seated themselves.
"Oh, important political and journalistic matters to discuss," said Sir Lemuel. ("Only they were not discussed,") he added, mentally.
"So I supposed," said Lady Belgrade, as she handed him a cup of tea, which he immediately passed to his guest.
After tea, when the service was removed, Sir Lemuel challenged Lady Belgrade for a game of chess, and told his daughter to show Mr. Scott those chromoes of the Madonnas of Raphael which had arrived in the last parcel from Paris.
Salome flushed to the edges of her dark hair as she arose, glanced shyly at her guest for an instant, and walked to the other end of the drawing-room.
There, on a gilded stand, under a brilliant gasolier, lay a large and handsome volume, which Salome indicated as the one referred to by her father.
The marquis brought two chairs to the stand, and they sat down to go over the book.
Meanwhile, the banker and the dowager commenced their game of chess. But from time to time, each looked furtively in the direction of the young people. They were looking at the Madonnas of Raphael, and, once in a while, shyly into each other's eyes. All that Sir Lemuel saw there pleased him. All that Lady Belgrade saw there displeased her.