"That's it. Such a dog with the ladies! Well, they'll make a nicely-matched pair, and I wish them joy of one another."
"It must hit Charles pretty badly."
"Of course it does! Look at him! The Prince here says he looks stern. I daresay that's how it would strike anyone who didn't know him. He looks to me as if he were enjoying a taste of hell."
He had gauged the matter exactly. Colonel Audley, had known that Peregrine Taverner's only hope of overcoming his infatuation lay in removing immediately from Barbara's neighbourhood, was tied to Brussels, and was obliged, day after day, to endure tantalising glimpses of Barbara, and night after night to see her waltzing with the Comte de Lavisse, looking up into his face with a smile on her lips and a provocative gleam in her eyes.
There were those who said that if Barbara had been quick to find consolation, so too had Audley. Neither was showing a bruised heart to the world. She had her handsome Belgian always at her side, and the Colonel seemed to have turned to little Miss Devenish. Well, said the interested, she would probably make him good wife.
Judith, wishing to believe that Charles, freed from his siren, had become sensible of Lucy's worth, still could not quite convince herself that it was so. "Do you think," she asked her husband hopefully, "that a man who had fancied himself in love with Lady Barbara might perhaps suffer from a revulsion of feeling, and so turn to her very opposite?"
"I really have no idea," replied Worth.
"It is quite true that he has been very much in her company since the engagement was broken off. He dances with her frequently, and seems to look at her with a great deal of kindness. Only -"
She broke off. Worth regarded her with a faint smile. "What profound observation are you about to make," he enquired.
"I can't believe that if he were falling in love with Lucy he would be so unhappy. For he is, Worth: you can't deny it! There is an expression in his face when he thinks one is not looking at him - I would like to kill that wicked creature! She to jilt Charles!"