Mary was as beautiful in her way as Lady Constance. Her charm was not so explicit, but perhaps it was as great. But, then, Mary Marriott was just an actress, and nobody.
He crushed down the unwelcome thought, for, despite all his new knowledge and experience, the old traditions of his breed and training were strong within him. He was the Duke of Paddington, and his mind must not stray into strange paths!
He was standing in the middle of the room, looking down, and frowning to himself. The subtle scent of the hot-house flowers which were massed in great silver bowls here and there mingled strangely with the sense of warmth from the great fires which had a strangely drowsy influence upon him.
Once more he was within the precincts of the Château dans le Bois Dormant.
"A penny for your thoughts, duke!" cut into his reverie.
He started and looked up.
Lady Constance stood before him, with her radiant smile and wonderful appeal. She swung a little fan of white feathers from one wrist. She wore a long, flowing black crêpe de chine Empire gown, scintillating here and there with rich passementerie embroideries and jet ornamentations. The dress was rich in its simplicity, graceful and flowing, it possessed the art that concealed art, and showed off to wonderful advantage the wearer's youthful beauty and glorious hair, the whiteness of her neck and arms against the shimmer of the black. It had been made by Worth, and only made more explicit the wonderful coronet of corn-ripe hair, surmounting a face as lovely as ever Raphael or Michael Angelo dreamt of and set down upon their canvases. She made an ensemble so sudden in its appearance, so absolutely overwhelming in its appeal, that for one of the first times in his life the duke was taken aback and blushed and stammered like a boy.
"I really do not know," he said at length. "I was in a sort of brown study, Lady Constance!"
"Well," she replied, "the offer of a penny, or should it be twopence? is still open; but if you are not going to deal, as the Americans say, explain to me the meaning of the words 'brown study.'"