“Great fun, croquet, isn’t it? Awful fun with pretty girls,” exclaimed Vane Trevor, rising, and standing on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and his glass in his hand, and simpering agreeably with his chin in the air. “I think it capital fun, I know. There’s so much cheating—ha, ha!—isn’t there?—and such lots of—of—whispering and conspiring—and—and—all that sort of thing, you know; and the girls like it awfully. At Torhampton we had capital games, and such glorious ground. Do you know the Torhamptons?”
“The Marquess?—no, of course I don’t; how should I?” said William with a little laugh of disgust.
“Oh! well, I thought a—but Lady Louisa, she is so sweetly pretty; I was told off pretty often to play with her and we had such fun knocking the fellows about. Capital player and awfully clever—they’re all clever—one of the cleverest families in England they’re thought; the old lady is so witty—you can’t imagine—and such a pleasant party staying there. I was almost the only fellow not a swell, by Jove, among them,” and he ran his eye along his handsome cornices, with a sort of smile that seemed to say something different. “I fancy they wish to be civil, however, from something Lady Fanny said—I rather fancy they have an idea of putting up Lord Edward—you know, for the county, but don’t let that go further, and I suppose they thought I might be of use. Won’t you have some more claret?”
“I don’t know them—I don’t understand these things; I don’t care if all the Marquesses in England were up the chimney,” said William, cynically, throwing himself back in his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and looking sulkily into the fire.
“Well—ha, ha!—that need not prevent your filling your glass, eh?” laughed Trevor, graciously and indulgently, as though he belonged himself to that order of Marquesses of whom Maubray spoke so slightly, and forgave him.
“Thanks; I will,” and so he did, and sipped a little; and after a little silence he asked with a surly quietude, “And why don’t you marry that lady—what’s her name—Louisa—if she liked you?”
“It doesn’t follow that she likes me, and you know there are difficulties; and even if she did, it does not follow that I like her; don’t you see?” and he cackled in gay self-complacency; “that is, of course, I mean liking in the way you mean.”
Again this desultory conversation flagged for a little time, and Trevor, leaning on the chimney-piece, and looking down on William, remarked profoundly—
“It’s odd—isn’t it?—when you come to think of it, how few things follow from one another; I’ve observed it in conversation—almost nothing, by Jove!”
“Nothing from nothing, and nothing remains,” said William drowsily, to the fire, repeating his old arithmetical formula.