“All the same,” she said, suddenly, “I am always sincere with you. It is not in my power to be so with every one. ‘Fate overrules my will.’”
“That is the trouble with most of us.”
Then he wished her goodbye, promising, however, to call again with regard to the Meeting. Lord Garrow met him on the staircase.
“I congratulate you on your election to Brookes's,” stammered his lordship, “but for Heaven's sake be cautious at play. Really, the younger men there are trying to revive the worst traditions in gaming. The loo was rather high at Chetwynd's last night,” he added, with a studied air of guilt. “I won £500 from my host. I call that the limit—even on old Cabinet Steinberg!”
He smiled, he waved his hand, feeling that he had displayed great taste in a situation of enormous difficulty. Something unusual, too, in the young man's face touched his heart. It seemed to him that here was one who had felt the world's buffets.
“I have never been just in my estimate of Mr. Orange,” said he to Sara, as he re-entered the drawing-room. “I quite took to him to-day. He has a fine countenance, and I am sure he is very much cut up by this painful affair. It's a pity he's a Catholic, for he would make such an excellent canon for St. Paul's. He would look the part so well.”
“‘Happiness, that nymph with unreturning feet,’ has passed him by,” said Sara, watching herself in one of the mirrors.
“She has passed a good many,” sighed his lordship. “But play me that lovely air which Titiens sings in Il Flauto Magico.”