She had seen Lady Victoria's expressive boudoir at Capheaton, and its mate in Curzon Street, and relieved the envy they inspired in a caustic epigram that happily did not reach the insolent beauty's ear. "These old coquettes," she had lisped, with an amused uplift of one eyebrow. "They surround themselves with the atmosphere of the demi-monde and forget that a wrinkle is as fatal as a chaperon."
The pictures in her own house were as correct as they were costly, and she had no boudoir. She invariably received her guests in the drawing-room, an immense and unique apartment, with a frieze of dusky copies of old masters, all of a size, and all framed in gilt as dim with time. From them depended a tapestry of crimson silk brocade of uncheckered surface. By a cunning arrangement of furniture the great room was broken up into a semblance of smaller ones, each with its group of comfortable chairs, its tea-table, or book case, or cabinet of bibelots, or open hearth. And all exhaled the inviting atmosphere of occupation.
Mrs. Kaye, rested, and more self-possessed than if the hastening lover had been the late Lord Brathland, but agreeably stirred nevertheless, awaited the new peer in a charming corner before a screen of dull gold, the last reviews on a table beside her, the afternoon sun shining in on her healthy unworn face. When he entered and advanced impetuously across the room she decided that he certainly was a dear, even if he lacked the fascination of Brathland and his kind. And his halo was almost visible. She therefore yielded enchantingly when he enveloped her, smothered her, stormed her lips, and even pulled her hair. She finally got him over to the little sofa—she had advanced to meet him—but remained in his arm, the very picture of tender voluptuous young womanhood. Indeed, she was well pleased, and found her Jack, with that light blazing in his eyes, quite handsome, and fascinating in his own boyish imperious self-confident way.
It was half an hour before she rang for tea, and then she looked so pretty and domestic on the other side of the little table, with its delicate and costly service, that Gwynne was obliged to pause and summon all his resolution before proceeding to another subject that possessed him as fully as herself; but he succeeded, for not even passion could turn him from his course; and she gave him his opening.
"Poor Lord Strathland!" she exclaimed, with a tear in her throat. "He was always so jolly and amusing, quite the most cheerful person I ever met. And before your cousin became—lost his health—we were great friends. Indeed he never quite forgot me. But it was for you I was so horribly cut up. I cried for two nights."
"Did you? But I was positive you did not make those tears in your first letter with your hair-brush." He laughed like a happy school-boy, while she protested with a roughish expression that made her look like a very young girl.
"It need not prevent our immediate marriage," he said. "What do you say to the last of this month?"
"I could get ready. Only girls, who never have any clothes, poor things, get trousseaux in these days. I had set my heart upon spending the honeymoon at the Abbey, but it would be rather indecent yet awhile; don't you think so?"
He had not an atom of tact and rushed upon his doom. "We shall have to cut the Abbey," he said, firmly. "I start for California three weeks from to-day."
"Indeed?" she said, stiffly. "I should have thought you would have consulted me. Not but that I shall be enchanted to visit California, but—well, you are rather lordly, you know."