'And you are not grateful?'
'I intend to be very grateful, so grateful as to entirely satisfy Lady Kirkbank.'
'You are horribly cynical. That reminds me, there was a poor girl whom Lady Kirkbank had under her wing one season—a Miss Trinder, to whom I am told you behaved shamefully.'
'There was a parson's daughter who threw herself at my head in a most audacious way, and who behaved so badly, egged on by Lady Kirkbank, that I had to take refuge in flight. Do you suppose I am the kind of man to marry the first adventurous damsel who takes a fancy to my town house, and thinks it would be a happy hunting ground for a herd of brothers and sisters? Miss Trinder was shocking bad style, and her designs were transparent from the very beginning! I let her flirt as much as she liked; and when she began to be seriously sentimental I took wing for the East.'
'Was she pretty?' asked Lesbia, not displeased at this contemptuous summing up of poor Belle Trinder's story.
'If you admire the Flemish type, as illustrated by Rubens, she was lovely. A complexion of lilies and roses—cabbage roses, bien entendu, which were apt to deepen into peonies after champagne and mayonaise at Ascot or Sandown—a figure—oh—well—a tremendous figure—hair of an auburn that touched perilously on the confines of red—large, serviceable feet, and an appetite—the appetite of a ploughman's daughter reared upon short commons.'
'You are very cruel to a girl who evidently admired you.'
'A fig for her admiration! She wanted to live in my house and spend my money.'
'There goes the gong,' exclaimed Lesbia; 'pray let us go to breakfast. You are hideously cynical, and I am wofully tired of you.'
And as they strolled back to the house, by lavender walk and rose garden, and across the dewy lawn, Lesbia questioned herself as to whether she was one whit better or more dignified than Isabella Trinder. She wore her rue with a difference, that was all.