“Perchance Nell too thinks so,” thought he, as he restlessly walked away, sighing: “I wish I were with her on the terrace.”
“’Sdeath, Duchess,” continued Nell abruptly, in assumed horror at the sudden thought, “the lady’s spirit may visit the ball, to the confusion of us all. Such things have been.”
“The Nell I mean,” said Portsmouth, with a confident smile, “will not venture here, e’en in spirit.”
Nell assumed a baby-innocence of face.
“She has not been bidden, I presume?” she queried.
“The vixen would not stop for asking,” declared Portsmouth, almost fiercely.
“Come without asking?” cried Nell, as if she could not believe that there could be such people upon the earth. “How ill-bred! Thine ear, loved one. My Nell revisits the world again at midnight. The rendezvous–St. James’s Park.”
Hart brushed close enough to the group, in his biting curiosity, to catch her half-whisper to Portsmouth. He at once sought a window and fresh air, chafing with surprise and indignation at what he had overheard.
“St. James’s at midnight,” he muttered. “’Tis my Nell’s abode.”
The Duchess herself stood stunned at what appeared to her a possible revelation of great import.