A faint suggestion of the Beautiful Sullenness manner clouded Carlyon's face.
'Oh, of course, you swear by your public!' he said, a trifle crossly. 'But whatever you may think of it, I'm glad the title has come my way. It's a good thing—it gives me a status.'
She was silent, and stood quietly beside him, stroking Spartan's head. Not a thought of the status she herself gave her husband by her world-wide fame crossed her mind, and the reproach that might have leaped to the lips of a less loving woman than she was—namely, that the position she had won by her own brilliant intellect far outweighed any trumpery title of heritage—never once occurred to her brain. But all the same, something in the composed grace of her attitude conveyed the impression of that fact to Carlyon silently, and with subtle force; for he was conscious of a sudden sense of smallness and inward shame.
'Yet after all,' she said presently, with a playful air, 'it isn't as if you were a brewer, you know! So many brewers and building contractors become lords nowadays, that somehow I always connect the peerage with Beer and Bricks. I suppose it's very wrong, but I can't help it. And it will seem odd to me at first to associate you with the two B's—you are so different to the usual type.'
He smiled,—well pleased to see her eyes resting upon him with the tender admiration to which he had become accustomed.
'Is luncheon ready?' he asked, after a brief pause, during which he was satisfied that he looked his best and that she was fully aware of it.
'Yes; let us go down and partake thereof,' she answered gaily. 'Will you tell the servants, or shall I?'
'Tell the servants what?' he demanded, with a slight frown.
She turned her pretty head over her shoulder laughingly.
'Why, to call you for the future "My Lord," or "m'lud." Which shall it be?'