"Yes," he said, "I know that Lady Lancaster can be very interesting," sarcastically. "What is it all about, Lady Adela?"
She lowered her voice, and glanced across the room where Lieutenant De Vere sat with rather a bored look on his face, trying to become interested in the lively chatter of the pretty Miss Dean.
"It is about that handsome Lieutenant De Vere," she said; "Lady Lancaster has been telling us that he is infatuated with a ridiculous creature—a servant, I think she said, or something like that. And he is going to propose to her, and it will most likely be a match. Now, you are his friend, Lord Lancaster. Please tell me if it is really so?"
"No, it is not," he replied, pulling savagely at the innocent ends of his long mustache.
"Then it is not true? Lady Lancaster was only telling it to tease Emma Dean, I fancy. Emma has been setting her cap at the lieutenant, you know. She will be very glad to hear it was all a joke."
"But it was not a joke, really," he said, embarrassed. "You know what Tennyson says about a 'lie that is half a truth,' Lady Adela. Well, that is how the case stands. Lady Lancaster has simply misrepresented the facts. There was a grain of truth in her bushel of falsehood."
"Oh, dear!" cried Lady Adela, in dismay. She nestled a little nearer him on the fauteuil where they were sitting. "Do tell me the right of it, Lord Lancaster; I am all curiosity."
"Then I will tell you the right of it, if you care to hear," he replied; and there was so stern a look on his face that the earl's daughter was frightened. She wondered if he was angry with her.
"I hope you are not offended with me for repeating what Lady Lancaster said," she observed sweetly, giving him a demure look out of her large black eyes.