‘If you will excuse me saying so, I do not think I could have made a mistake. But you must have been very young at the time?’
‘I was eighteen; I am twenty now,’ laughed Nora in a nervous manner. ‘I never conceal my age, and never mean to. It is such folly. If a woman looks too young for it, all the better. If too old, it will only make a bad matter worse to take off a few years. Don’t you agree with me, Mr Sterndale?’
‘I agree with everything your ladyship says, even if it went against my own judgment,’ replied the solicitor.
‘My goodness, you’re quite a courtier! I thought the law allowed men no time for cultivating the smaller graces. If ever I want to get a separation from Ilfracombe, Mr Sterndale, I shall come to you to make terms for me.’
‘Oh, dear me!’ exclaimed the solicitor, laughing; ‘your ladyship must not depend on me in such a case, really! I have been his lordship’s man of business for years, and I am not sure if such an unmitigated piece of treachery would not rank with high treason.’
‘Well, here is dinner, which appeals to us all alike,’ cried Lady Ilfracombe, as she placed her hand on the arm of Mr Jack Portland, ‘so let us drop all discussion, except that of good things, until it is over,’ and the earl and the solicitor followed her gaily to the dining-room. But Ilfracombe was longing to have a private interview with Mr Sterndale, and as soon as the meal was concluded, he asked the pardon of the others if he detained the solicitor for half an hour.
‘You can send us word when coffee is ready, Nora,’ he said to his wife as Mr Portland held the door open for her ladyship to pass through, and then, with a nod to his host, went after her.
As soon as they were well out of hearing, Ilfracombe lent over the table and said to Sterndale in a lowered voice,—
‘I don’t see why we need go to the library; I am not in a mood for accounts or anything of that sort to-night. I only want to ask you about Miss Llewellyn. How did she take the news of my marriage, Sterndale, and is she well out of England? Where did she go to, and was she satisfied with the provision I made for her? To tell you the truth, the thought of her has been bothering me a good deal lately. The countess is a noble, generous girl, and quite up to snuff, but she is high-spirited, and if there were any chance of her meeting the other, or hearing much about her, I wouldn’t answer for the consequences.’
‘You need not be in the least afraid of that, Lord Ilfracombe,’ replied the solicitor.