"My privilege, cousin," said I, and kissed Cora, as I might have done a sister, ere she could draw back; and the usually laughing girl trembled, and grew so deadly pale, that I surveyed her with surprise.
Lady Louisa hastily drew aside, as I bent over her hand, and barely ventured to touch it with my lips; but judge of my rage and her hauteur when my cool and sarcastic brother officer, Mr. Berkeley, came languidly forward, and claiming what he termed "the privilege of the season," ere she could avoid it, somewhat brusquely pressed his well-moustached lip to her cheek.
Though affecting to smile, she drew haughtily back, with her nether lip quivering, and her black eyes sparkling dangerously.
"The season, as you term it, for these absurdities is over, Berkeley," said I, gravely. "Moreover, this house is not a casino, and that trophy should have been removed by the gardener long since."
I twitched down the branch, and tossed it into a corner. Berkeley only uttered one of his quiet, almost noiseless, laughs, and, without being in the least put out of countenance, made a species of pirouette on the brass heels of his glazed boots, which brought him face to face with the Countess, who at that moment came into the conservatory after her daughter, whom she rarely permitted to go far beyond the range of her eyeglass.
"Lady Chillingham," said he, resolved at once to launch into conversation, "have you heard the rumour that our friend, Lord Lucan, is to command a brigade in the Army of the East?"
"I have heard that he is to command a division, Mr. Berkeley, but Lord George Paget is to have a brigade," replied the Countess, coldly and precisely.
"Ah, Paget—haw—glad to hear it," said he, as he passed loungingly away; "he was an old chum of my father's—haw—doocid glad."
It was a weakness of Berkeley's to talk thus; indeed, it was a common mess-room joke with Wilford, Scriven, Studhome, and others of ours, to bring the peerage on the tapis, at a certain hour of the evening, and "trot him out;" but on hearing him speak thus of his father, who—honest man—began life as a drayman, it was too much for me, and I fairly laughed aloud.
The salute he had so daringly given Lady Loftus was to me a keen source of jealous anger and annoyance, which I could neither readily forgive nor forget, and had the old duelling fashion still been extant, the penalty might have proved a dear one. I had the bitter consciousness that she whose hand I had barely ventured to touch with a lip that trembled with suppressed emotion had been brusquely saluted—-actually kissed before my face—by one for whom I had rather more, if possible, than a profound contempt.