“A duke’s granddaughter,” said the imperious Caroline.
“I’m damned if I do,” said Cheriton, amiably.
“You are damned if you don’t,” said Caroline, making the obvious retort which is so apt to be mistaken for wit, and fixing an eye upon him that was positively arctic. “That is, if the creature is worth her salt.”
“You are doubtless correct, Caroline,” said Cheriton, with the air of a man who made a god of reason. “You have a good head. If only your heart——!”
With a bow and a smile, which had wrought great havoc in their time, although to some they had a certain pathos now, Cheriton withdrew. He pointed a course towards a famous shop at the corner of Burlington Gardens.
“It is quite true what they say,” this nobleman of distinguished appearance and open manners might have been heard to mutter to high heaven, as he gazed upwards to inquire of Jove whether he intended to ruin his hat. “She is the most disagreeable old woman in London.”
However, there is always the reverse of the medal, the other side to the picture. This handsome, courtly and carefully-preserved specimen had been somewhat badly mauled no doubt by the old lioness. But had he been endowed with eyes in the back of his head, or been gifted with some occult faculty, he would have found a salve for his wounds. For his exit from the house in Hill Street was marked by a mildly ascetic form which was efficiently and discreetly veiled amid the curtains of the dining-room windows. Could he have been conscious of the eyes that were concentrated upon the back of his gracefully erect and faultlessly tailored exterior; could he by some special process of the mind have ravished the secrets of that chaste yet susceptible bosom, he would have been assured that it is not always necessary to invoke the black arts of the perruquier to recommend one’s self to the mind and heart of a Christian gentlewoman. Had Lord Cheriton cut off his mustache as a Lenten sacrifice—which we regret to say was not at all likely, as there is reason to fear he did not respect the Church sufficiently to contemplate such a course of action—or had he been as bald as an egg, which Caroline Crewkerne declared he certainly was, within the sanctity of Miss Burden’s breast there would still only have reigned the image of one perfect man, of one true prince.
CHAPTER IV
ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST CAUSE OF ALL ROMANCE
WRAPPED in these reflections that we have dared to disclose, Miss Burden was oblivious of the fact that an old woman leaning upon an ebony stick, and accompanied by the roundest of all possible dogs, with the curliest of all possible tails, had entered the room. With a somewhat cruel abruptness she was made aware of that fact.
“Burden, don’t be a fool,” said a voice that was full of hard sarcasm. “Come away from that window immediately.”