"C'est tout simple," rejoined Comtesse Leinsengen, with a shrug of her shoulders.
"It appears to me," said Lady Baskerville, "that if he does go he will not be very much missed. I never knew so dull a member of society; he never speaks but to lay down the law, or to inculcate some moral truth: now really when one has done with the nursery, that is rather too bad."
"Providing she don't drive away George Foley," said Lady Boileau, "she may reap the fruits of her fainting here."
"Mr. Foley," replied Lady Baskerville to her dear friend, "is the man in the world who will do whatever suits him best; and I particularly admire his manner and his ways: they are all perfectly in good taste; and I have already promised him that he shall be my cavaliere servente for the season."
"Promised!—well, dear Lady Baskerville, I thought you were too prudent to make such promises. What will Lord Baskerville say?" lowering her tone to a whisper.
Lady Baskerville, speaking aloud—"Oh, dear! la! I should never have thought of asking him what he likes upon such an occasion;—we live too well together to trouble each other with our little arrangements.—Is it not true, Lord Baskerville? do we not do exactly as we choose?"
"I hope your Ladyship does," he replied, in all the airs of his exclusive character; "I should conceive myself vastly unhappy if you did not?" Lady Baskerville looked significantly at her dear friend Lady Boileau; who knew, as well as herself, that this ultra-liberalism of her Lord in regard to the conduct of wives, whatever it might be in respect to husbands, was entirely assumed on Lord Baskerville's part.
While this conversation passed in the drawing-room, Lord Albert and Mr. Foley were discoursing in their apartment above-stairs. They had each expressed great interest about Lady Hamlet Vernon's indisposition; and after waiting some time to hear accounts of her from her female attendants, they fell into other conversation of various kinds, during which Lord Albert D'Esterre found himself unfeignedly amused and interested with the talents, taste, and refinement of Mr. Foley; and the more so, as he spoke much of Dunmelraise and its inhabitants, and was lavish in his praise of Lady Adeline.
"There is only one point," he said, "which however is hardly worth mentioning, for of course it only arises out of the seclusion and the monotony of her present existence; but certainly Lady Adeline, pour trancher le mot, is a little methodistical—the sooner you go and put that matter to rights the better." Lord Albert's manner of receiving the latter part of this information, proved to Mr. Foley that he had mistaken the character of the person he addressed, and he added,