'Let me settle the bill,' said Carlyon, looking adoringly into her eyes, 'or any amount of bills!'
A faint tremor ran through Delicia's body, as though a cold wind were playing on her nerves. Bending a little forward, she listened more intently.
'Generous man!' laughed Lady Brancewith. 'I know your wife has made you rich, but I remember the time when you were not a bit flush of money, were you, poor boy! But you were always very nice and very complimentary, even then.'
'Glad you admit it,' said Carlyon, drawing a little nearer to her. 'The memory of it may decide you not to throw me over now!'
'What nonsense you talk!' and Lady Brancewith gave him her hand to hold. 'I want to see your wife; do introduce me to her! I have often been on the point of meeting her, but never have done so. She doesn't know the people I know, and I don't know the people she knows, so we've always missed each other. She is such a genius! Dunce as you are, you must have sense enough to be very proud of her!'
Carlyon looked dubious. Then he suddenly said,—
'Well, I don't know! I think a clever woman—a writer of books, you know, like my wife—is a mistake. She is always unsexed.'
As the word passed his lips, Delicia rose, pale, fair and calm in her glistening robes, and confronted them. Like an austere white angel suddenly descended from heaven to earth she stood,—quite silent,—looking straight at her husband and his companion with such a grand scorn in her dark violet eyes as made Carlyon shrink within himself like a beaten hound. Lady Brancewith glanced up at her with a half-impertinent, half-questioning smile, but not a word did Delicia utter. One moment she stood surveying the disloyal, ungracious and ungrateful churl who owed all he possessed in the world to her tenderness and bounty; then coldly, quietly, and with an unshaken grace of bearing and queenliness of movement, she turned away, her soft satin train sweeping them by as she moved forward into the crowded rooms and disappeared.
'Who was that wonderful-looking woman?' asked Lady Brancewith, eagerly.
Carlyon flushed, anon grew deadly pale.