But that look was momentary; she commanded herself in the next instant, saluted Lord Lavendale with the haughtiest inclination of her head, and swept onward, passing him as if he had been the lowest thing that could have checked her progress or engaged her attention.
"She would have looked longer at a stray cur than she looked at me," said Lavendale to his companion, standing stock-still, planted, as it were, in his shame and mortification, as if that look of Lady Judith's had transfixed him.
"Why should she look at you?" asked the other. "You did your very uttermost towards breaking her heart, and if you did not succeed, 'tis that women are made of sterner stuff than men think. She owes you nothing but contempt."
Mr. Durnford was not one of those parasites who live and fatten upon a patron. He was a man of good birth and mean fortune, but he had too much pride to associate with Lavendale save on equal terms. He would have perished rather than descend to the position of led captain. He shared his friend's vices, but he never flattered them.
"She was always as proud as Lucifer, and I suppose she is prouder now she has the spending of Topsparkle's money. What a glorious creature she is, Herrick! Her beauty has ripened within the last five years as a flower-garden ripens between May and July—developing day by day into a richer glow and flush of summer beauty. She is the most glorious creature on this earth, I swear. The Sultan's almond-eyed favourite, she they called the Star of the Bosphorus, is but a kitchen-wench to her."
"She might have been your wife had you behaved decently," said Durnford.
"Yes, she was to have been mine; and I lost her—for what, Herrick? For a whim, for a wager, for the triumph of ousting a rival. You don't suppose I ever cared for that little French devil! But to cheat Philip Wharton out of his latest conquest—to win five thousand from Camden of the Guards, who swore that I had no chance against Wharton—for the mere dash and swagger of the thing, Herrick—to get myself more talked about than any man in London, I carried off the little lady who had made herself the rage of the hour, and tried to think that I was over head and ears in love with her. In love with her—with a woman who ate garlic at every meal, and swore strange oaths in Gascon! 'Pécaïre!' she used to cry—'Pécaïre!' in her southern twang—and I was ruining my fortune and my reputation for such a creature!"
"You had your whim," sneered Durnford. "You won Camden's five thousand."
"Every penny of which Chichinette devoured, with another five thousand to boot."
"Naturally. But you had your fancy, and you got yourself more lampooned and caricatured than any man in England, except the king. You came next to his Majesty in the supremacy of ridicule. And you lost Lady Judith Walberton."