"And how do you like it?"
"Oh, so much! It is so beautiful and bright. I should like to stay here always."
"Bertie is much better and stronger since we came here, which partly accounts for his wish to stay," said his mother, with a slight sigh.
"I wish I could take you to sea, my boy," cried Captain Verner; "a cruise with me would make you all right."
Lady Frances turned her pale eyes on the speaker, and Glynn noticed that they darkened with a look of intense pain only for an instant, while she said with her usual composure, "I have no doubt that Herbert will be quite fortified by Dr. Lemaire's treatment. Then the summer is before him, and he will have gathered strength before winter. Winter is very severe and dreary at Denham."
"You should winter at Palermo," observed Glynn. "It is a delightful spot—a sort of place to make you forget troubles."
"I wish you would," said Verner, earnestly.
"Say could," returned Lady Frances, and she rose to ring the bell.
She was very tall and slight, exceedingly dignified and deliberate in her movements, and would have been rather handsome but for her extreme stillness, coldness, and want of color. A pale blonde sounds like insipidity, but Lady Frances was not insipid; she was a great lady to the tips of her fingers, yet simple in dress and manner to a degree that bewildered those gorgeous dames, the wives of her husband's wealthier constituents, on the rare occasions when they were admitted within the sacred portals of Denham Castle.
"Why are you hurrying away to London?" asked Verner. "There is nothing to call Deering back, as he has lost his seat."