“Well,” continued his friend, “I might have enjoyed that experience, but I was feeling depressed at the time; a lot of the depression went under the influence of frivolous talk, military music, and champagne. Yet, all the same, do these things really count for much? I felt just as wretched afterwards.”
The glimpse he had obtained that afternoon of Sara de Treverell—Sara flushed with agitation, very bright in her glance, exceedingly subtle in her smile, had stirred a great tenderness he had once felt for that young lady. The news, too, that she had been chosen as a bride by the prudent, rich, and most important Duke of Marshire made his lordship feel that perhaps he had committed a blunder in not having secured her, during her first season, for himself. He feared that he had lost an opportunity; and this reflection, while it lowered temporarily his self-esteem, placed Sara on a dangerous eminence. She would be a duchess—one of the great duchesses. Little Sara!
“She was looking extraordinarily handsome,” he exclaimed. “Of course she means to take him. But she liked me at one time. I am speaking of Sara de Treverell. Marshire is by way of being a stick. Who could have imagined him going in for a high-spirited, brilliant girl like Sara?”
Formerly he had always spoken of Sara as a clever little devil, but Robert showed no surprise at the new adjective.
“Brilliant!” repeated his lordship. “Don't you agree?”
“Absolutely. She is the most brilliant girl in London.”
“But heartless,” said his lordship pathetically; “she hasn't one bit of heart.”
“There I don't agree with you. Of course she is strange and rather wild.”
“Tête-montée. And then the Asiatic streak!”
“True. The fiercest wind cannot take the angles out of the bough of a tree an inch thick. You may break it, but you cannot destroy its angles. That is so, no doubt, with one's racial tendencies. The girl is wilful and romantic. It will be very bad for them both if there is no love on her side. She is capable, I should say, of very deep affection.”