“How do you contrive to keep your rooms so deliciously cool? The blinds are down and the windows open, but that alone won't do, for I have just left a drawing-room that is very nearly insupportable; yours must be the work of some of those pretty sylphs that poets place in attendance upon their heroines. How fearfully hot yesterday was! You did not go to the Derby with Lady May's party, I believe.”
He watched her clever face, to discover whether she had heard of the scene between him and Richard Arden—“I don't think she has.”
“No,” she said, “my guardian, Mr. Arden, took me there instead. On second thoughts, I feared I should very likely be in the way. One is always de trop where there is so much love-making; and I am a very bad gooseberry.”
“A very dangerous one, I should fancy. And who are all these lovers?”
“Oh, really, they are so many, it is not easy to reckon them up. Alice Arden, for instance, had two lovers—Lord Wynderbroke and Vivian Darnley.”
“What, two lovers charged upon one lady? Is not that false heraldry? And does she really care for that young fellow, Darnley?”
“I'm told she really is deeply attached to him. But that does not prevent her accepting Lord Wynderbroke. He has spoken, and been accepted. Old Sir Reginald told my guardian his brother, last night, and he told me in the carriage, as we drove home. I wonder how soon it will be. I should rather like to be one of her bridesmaids. Perhaps she will ask me.”
Mr. Longcluse felt giddy and stunned; but he said, quite gaily—
“If she wishes to be suitably attended, she certainly will. But young ladies generally prefer a foil to a rival, even when so very beautiful as she is.”
“And there was Vivian Darnley at one side, I'm told, whispering all kinds of sweet things, and poor old Wynderbroke at the other, with his glasses to his eyes, reporting all he saw. Only think! What a goose the old creature must have looked!” And the young lady laughed merrily. “But can you tell me about the other affair?” she asked.