"She thinks him so wise in all worldly matters, you know; and people in London fancied she would have been the second Lady Marlowe, if she had not met General Lennox just at a critical time, and fallen in love with him;" and as she said this she laughed.
"Really!" exclaimed Linnett; and he surveyed Lady Jane in this new light wonderingly.
"I really don't know; I heard it said merely; but very likely, you know, it is not true," she answered with an artless giggle.
"I knew you were quizzing—though, by Jove, you did sell me at first; but I really think Sir Jekyl's a little spoony on that pretty little Mrs. Maberly. Is she a widow?"
"Oh, dear, no—at least, not quite; she has a husband in India, but then, poor man, he's so little in the way she need hardly wish him dead."
"I see," said Linnett, looking at Mrs. Maberly with a grave interest.
While Miss Blunket was entertaining and instructing little Linnett with this sort of girlish chatter, and from the whist-table, between the deals, arose those critical discussions and reviews, relieved now and then by a joke from the Baronet, or from his partner, Colonel Doocey, at the piano, countenanced by old Lady Blunket, who had come to listen and remained to doze, Beatrix, her fingers still on the keys, was listening to young Strangways.
There are times, lights, accidents, under which your handsome young people become incredibly more handsome, and this Guy Strangways now shared in that translated glory, as he leaned on the back of a tall carved chair, sometimes speaking, sometimes listening.
"It is quite indescribable, Miss Marlowe, how your music interests me—I should say, haunts me. I thought at first it was because you loved ballad music, which I also love; but it is not that—it is something higher and more peculiar."
"I am sure you were right at first, for I know I am a very indifferent musician," said Beatrix, looking down under her long lashes on the keys over which the jewelled fingers of her right hand wandered with hardly a tinkle, just tracing dreamily one of those sweet melancholy airs which made in fancy an accompaniment to the music of that young fellow's words.