Harry swore he never had such an idea, and was much too much of a man and a gentleman to behave in that way.—And yet it seemed wonderfully clever! And here was the Countess saying:
“Take your reward, Mr. Harry Jocelyn. You have succeeded; I am your humble slave. I come to you and sue for peace. To save my reputation I endanger myself. This is generous of you.”
“Am I such a clever fellow?” thought the young gentleman. “Deuced lucky with women”: he knew that: still a fellow must be wonderfully, miraculously, clever to be able to twist and spin about such a woman as this in that way. He did not object to conceive that he was the fellow to do it. Besides, here was the Countess de Saldar—worth five hundred of the Conley girls—almost at his feet!
Mollified, he said: “Now, didn’t you begin it?”
“Evasion!” was the answer. “It would be such pleasure to you so see a proud woman weep! And if yesterday, persecuted as I am, with dreadful falsehoods abroad respecting me and mine, if yesterday I did seem cold to your great merits, is it generous of you to take this revenge?”
Harry began to scent the double meaning in her words. She gave him no time to grow cool over it. She leaned, half abandoned, on his arm. Arts feminine and irresistible encompassed him. It was a fatal mistake of Juliana’s to enlist Harry Jocelyn against the Countess de Saldar. He engaged, still without any direct allusion to the real business, to move heaven and earth to undo all that he had done, and the Countess implied an engagement to do—what? more than she intended to fulfil.
Ten minutes later she was alone with Caroline.
“Tie yourself to the Duke at the dinner,” she said, in the forcible phrase she could use when necessary. “Don’t let them scheme to separate you. Never mind looks—do it!”
Caroline, however, had her reasons for desiring to maintain appearances. The Countess dashed at her hesitation.
“There is a plot to humiliate us in the most abominable way. The whole family have sworn to make us blush publicly. Publicly blush! They have written to Mama to come and speak out. Now will you attend to me, Caroline? You do not credit such atrocity? I know it to be true.”