"He is making up his paper," said de Cazalet, lazily contemplating the worker's bowed shoulders. "I wonder if he is saying anything about us."
"I am happy to say that he does not often discuss church matters," said Mr. Faddie. "He shows his good sense by a careful avoidance of opinion upon our difficulties and our differences."
"Perhaps he doesn't think them worth discussing—of no more consequence than the shades of difference between tweedledum and tweedledee," yawned de Cazalet, whereupon Mr. Faddie gave him a look of contemptuous anger, and left the room.
Mr. FitzJesse went away soon afterwards with his batch of letters for the post-bag in the hall, and the Baron was left alone, in listless contemplation of the fire. He had been in the drawing-room, but had found that apartment uninteresting by reason of Mrs. Tregonell's absence. He did not care to sit and watch the two Miss St. Aubyns playing chess—nor to hear Mrs. Fairfax Torrington dribbling out stray paragraphs from the "society journals" for the benefit of nobody in particular—nor to listen to Mrs. St. Aubyn's disquisitions upon the merits of Alderney cows, with which Jessie Bridgeman made believe to be interested, while deep in the intricacies of a crewel-work daffodil. For him the spacious pink and white panelled room without one particular person was more desolate than the wild expanse of the Pampas, with its low undulations, growing rougher towards the base of the mountains. He had come to the library—an apartment chiefly used by the men—to bask in the light of the fire, and to brood upon agreeable thoughts. The meditations of a man who has a very high opinion of his own merits are generally pleasant, and just now Oliver de Cazalet's ideas about himself were unusually exalted, for had he not obviously made the conquest of one of the most charming women he had ever met.
"A pity she has a husband," he thought. "It would have suited me remarkably well to drop into such a luxurious nest as this. The boy is not three years old—by the time he came of age—well—I should have lived my life, I suppose, and could afford to subside into comfortable obscurity," sighed de Cazalet, conscious of his forty years. "The husband looks uncommonly tough; but even Hercules was mortal. One never knows how or when a man of that stamp may go off the hooks."
These pleasing reflections were disturbed by the entrance of Mopsy, who, after prowling all over the house in quest of masculine society, came yawning into the library in search of anything readable in the way of a newspaper—a readable paper with Mopsy meaning theatres, fashions, or scandal.
She gave a little start at sight of de Cazalet, whose stalwart form and florid good looks were by no means obnoxious to her taste. If he had not been so evidently devoted to Mrs. Tregonell, Mopsy would have perchance essayed his subjugation; but, remembering Dopsy's bitter experience of last year, the sadder and wiser Miss Vandeleur had made up her mind not to "go for" any marriageable man in too distinct a manner. She would play that fluking game which she most affected at billiards—sending her ball spinning all over the table with the hope that some successful result must come of a vigorous stroke.
She fluttered about the room, then stopped in a Fra Angelico pose over a table strewed with papers.
"Baron, have you seen the Queen?" she asked presently.
"Often. I had the honour of making my bow to her last April. She is one of the dearest women I know, and she was good enough to feel interested in my somewhat romantic career."