Sir Everard found his mother primed and loaded; but she nursed her wrath throughout dinner, and it was not until they were in the drawing-room alone that she went off. He was so moodily distrait all through the meal that he never saw the volcano smoldering, and the Vesuvian eruption took him altogether by surprise.
"Your conduct has been disgraceful!" Lady Kingsland passionately cried—"unworthy of a man of honor! You pay Lady Louise every attention; you make love to her in the most prononcé manner, and at the eleventh hour you desert her for this forward little barbarian."
Sir Everard opened his eyes in cool surprise.
"My dear mother, you mistake," he said, with perfect sang froid.
"Lady Louise made love to me!"
"Everard!"
Her voice absolutely choked with rage.
"It sounds conceited and foppish, I know," pursued the young gentleman; "but you force me to it in self-defense. I never made love to Lady Louise, as Lady Louise can tell you, if you choose to ask."
"You never asked her in so many words, perhaps, to be your wife. Short of that, you have left nothing undone."
Sir Everard thought of the dinner-party, of the moonlit balcony, of
George Grosvenor, and was guiltily silent.
"Providence must have sent him," he thought, "to save me in the last supreme moment. Pledged to Lady Louise, and madly in love with Harriet Hunsden, I should blow out my brains before sunset!"