“Bold for a friend, my lady,” he said gracefully, “bold for the absent who has none to plead his cause.”
Lady Betty laughed.
“Do you see that whirling, frantic thing yonder?” she asked, pointing; “’tis my Lady Sunderland’s India shawl; she is waving to me. We must go back, sir; she thinks I venture too near the lions.”
“We must go back, it seems, since you command it,” he replied regretfully, “but I may see Lady Clancarty again? I may speak to her of—her husband?”
Betty hesitated for the twentieth part of a second and then she smiled.
“We are at the Lion’s Head,” she said, “and I shall receive my friends after supper—but do not talk of Lord Clancarty.”
He bowed profoundly, and she moved on, for the India shawl was waving frantically now and Savile and the others were coming toward them.
“I thank you for the privilege,” said Richard Trevor with his daring smile; “we will talk of Lady Clancarty.”
But Betty answered not a word; she walked back across the heath, proudly silent, nor did she cast a single relenting glance behind her—and thus failed to see the quizzical expression in his eyes.