"There is nothing to be done, or said. Lady Barbara and I are agreed that we should not suit, after all. I have told you my trouble: will you not trust me with yours?"
"If I dared, you would think me - you would turn on me in disgust!"
"I can safely promise that I should not do anything of the sort. Come, let us sit down on this uncomfortably rustic bench!… Now, what is it, my poor child?"
Chapter Sixteen
The news that Colonel Audley's engagement was at an end afforded curiously little satisfaction to his friends. They had all wanted to see it broken, and the crease smoothed from between the Colonel's brows, but the crease grew deeper, and a hard look seemed to have settled about his month. Occasionally the old, charming smile flashed out, but although he would talk lightly enough, laugh at the Headquarters' jokes, spar sometimes with his fellow-officers, and dance at the balls as willingly as he had ever done, those who knew him found his cheerfulness forced, and realised sadly that the gay hussar had vanished, leaving in his place an older man, who was rather aloof, often abstracted, and had no confidences to make. The young Prince of Nassau, entering shyly upon his very nominal duties or the Duke's staff, was even a little nervous of him, a circumstance which at first astonished Colonel Gordon. "Stern?" he repeated. "Audley? I think your Highness has perhaps mistaken the word?"
"Un peu severe," said the Prince.
"It's quite true," said Fremantle. "Damn the wench!" he added, giving his sash a vicious hitch. "I wish to God she would go back to England and give the poor devil a chance to forget her! If she had a spark of sensibility she would!"
"Perhaps she doesn't want him to forget her," suggested Gordon. "Do you think she means to get him back?"
"If she does she ain't going the right way to work. They're saying she'll have that Belgian fellow - what's his name? Bylandt's brigade: all teeth and eyes and black whiskers. Ugh!"
"Lavisse," said Gordon, apparently recognising the count from this description without any difficulty.