"Yes; I know there is a cold kind of beauty—but there are women who are as fascinating as they are lovely. Our hostess, for instance—don't you think her utterly sweet?"
"She is very lovely. Do come and sit by the fire. It is such a creepy morning. I'll hunt for any newspapers you like presently; but in the meanwhile let us chat. I was getting horribly tired of my own thoughts when you came in."
Mopsy simpered, and sat down in the easy chair opposite the Baron's. She began to think that this delightful person admired her more than she had hitherto supposed. His desire for her company looked promising. What if, after all, she, who had striven so much less eagerly than poor Dopsy strove last year, should be on the high road to a conquest. Here was the handsomest man she had ever met, a man with title and money, courting her society in a house full of people.
"Yes, she is altogether charming," said the Baron lazily, as if he were talking merely for the sake of conversation. "Very sweet, as you say, but not quite my style—there is a something—an intangible something wanting. She has chic—she has savoir-faire; but she has not—no, she has not that electrical wit which—which I have admired in others less conventionally beautiful."
The Baron's half-veiled smile, a smile glancing from under lowered eyelids, hinted that this vital spark which was wanting in Christabel might be found in Mopsy.
The damsel blushed, and looked down, conscious of eyelashes artistically treated.
"I don't think Mrs. Tregonell has been quite happy in her married life," said Mopsy. "My brother and Mr. Tregonell are very old friends, don't you know; like brothers, in fact; and Mr. Tregonell tells Jack everything. I know his cousin didn't want to marry him—she was engaged to somebody else, don't you know, and that engagement was broken off, but he had set his heart upon marrying her—and his mother had set her heart upon the match—and between them they talked her into it. She never really wanted to marry him—Leonard has owned that to Jack in his savage moods. But I ought not to run on so—I am doing very wrong"—said Mopsy, hastily.
"You may say anything you please to me. I am like the grave. I never give up a secret," said the Baron, who had settled himself comfortably in his chair, assured that Mopsy, once set going, would tell him all she could tell.
"No, I don't believe—from what Jack says he says in his tempers—I don't believe she ever liked him," pursued Mopsy. "And she was desperately in love with the other one. But she gave him up at her aunt's instigation, because of some early intrigue of his—which was absurd, as she would have known, poor thing, if she had not been brought up in this out-of-the-way corner of the world."
"The other one. Who was the other one?" asked the Baron.