"And not believe my word!"
Thaddeus smiled and bowed.
"There, Lady Tinemouth," cried she, affecting pet, "take your champion to yourself; he is no preux chevalier for me?"
"Thank you, Sophia," returned her ladyship, giving her hand to the count to lead her to the supper-room. "This is the way she skirmishes with all your sex, until her shrewd humor transforms them to its own likeness."
"And where is the man," observed Thaddeus, "who would not be so metamorphosed under the spells of such a Circe?"
"It won't do, Mr. Constantine," cried she, taking her place opposite to him: "my anger is not to be appeased by calling me names; you don't mend the compliment by likening me to a heathen and a witch."
Lady Tinemouth bore her part in the conversation in a strain more in unison with the count's mind. However, he found no inconsiderable degree of amusement from the unreflecting volubility and giddy sallies of her friend; and, on the whole, spent the two hours he passed there with some perceptions of his almost forgotten sense of pleasure.
He was in an elegant apartment, in the company of two lovely and accomplished women, and he was the object of their entire attention and gratitude. He had been used to this in his days of happiness, when he was "the expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion and the mould of form,—the observed of all observers!" and the re-appearance of such a scene awakened, with tender remembrances, an associating sensibility which made him rise with regret when the clock struck eleven.
Lady Tinemouth bade him good-night, with an earnest request that he would shortly repeat his visit; and they parted, mutually pleased with each other.