'Must have you down at Carnaby Court when the event—perhaps the double event—comes off; good style of old place—the baronial, the mediæval, the picturesque, and all that sort of thing—bored by artists and tourists, don't you know, but, of course, you remember it—ta-ta!'
And arresting skilfully an undeniable hiccup, the senile baronet trotted, or rather 'toddled,' away in the moonlight. Remember it!
Well and sadly did Trevor Chute remember it; for there, on a soft autumn night, when the music and the hum of the dancers' voices came through the ball-room oriels, when the moonlight steeped masses of the ancient pile in silver sheen or sunk them in shadow—
'When buttresses and buttresses alternately
Seem framed of ebon or ivory,'
as he and Clare stole forth for one delicious moment from the conservatory, had he first told her how deeply and tenderly he loved her; and now again memories of the waltz they had just concluded, of the delicate perfume of her floating dress, of the scarlet flower in her dark hair, of the drooping, downcast eyes, and her lovely lips, near which his own were hovering, come vividly back to haunt him, as they had done many a time and oft when he had seen the same moon that lit up prosaic Piccadilly shining in its Orient splendour on the marble domes and towers of Delhi, on the waters of the Jumna or the Indus, and on the snow-clad peaks that look down, from afar, on the vast plains of Assam!
Now that their old tormentor was gone, both Chute and Jerry Vane laughed, but with much of scornful bitterness in their merriment.
'Hope you enjoyed your dinner, Jerry!'
'Hereditary rank is very noble, according to Burke and Debrett,' replied Vane, cynically. 'He is a baronet, true; but I would rather win a title than succeed to one; and to meet a few more men like Sir Carnaby would make a down-right Republican of me.'
'How such an empty fool ever had a daughter like Clare Collingwood is a riddle to me. He is so cool, so listless, so heartless——'
'Yet so thoroughbred, as it is deemed!'