"He will not require them? Yes, it is a common opinion," said Mariette, with composure. Lord Waynflete stared a little, and returned to his hostess. Mariette betook himself to Elizabeth for tea, and she introduced him to the girl in white, who looked at him with enthusiasm, and at once threw over her bevy of young men, in favour of the spectacled and lean-faced stranger.
"You are a Catholic, Monsieur?" she asked him, fervently. "How I envy you! I adore the Oratory! When we are in town I always go there to Benediction--unless Mamma wants me at home to pour out tea. Do you know Cardinal C----?"
She named a Cardinal Archbishop, then presiding over the diocese of Westminster.
"Yes, mademoiselle, I know him quite well. I have just been staying with him."
She clasped her hands eagerly.
"How very interesting! I know him a little. Isn't he nice?"
"No," said Mariette resolutely. "He is magnificent--a saint--a scholar--everything--but not nice!"
The girl looked a little puzzled, then angry, and after a few minutes' more conversation she returned to her young men, conspicuously turning her back on Mariette.
He threw a deprecating, half-penitent look at Elizabeth, whose faced twitched with amusement, and sat down in a corner behind her that he might observe without talking. His quick intelligence sorted the people about him almost at once--the two yeoman-squires, who were not quite at home in Mrs. Gaddesden's drawing-room, were awkward with their tea-cups, and talked to each other in subdued voices, till Elizabeth found them out, summoned them to her side, and made them happy; the agent who was helping Lady Merton with tea, making himself generally useful; Philip and another gilded youth, the son, he understood, of a neighbouring peer, who were flirting with the girl in white; and yet a third fastidious Etonian, who was clearly bored by the ladies, and was amusing himself with the adjutant and a cigarette in a distant corner. His eyes came back at last to the pasteur. An able face after all; cool, shrewd, and not unspiritual. Very soon, he, the parson--whose name was Everett--and Elizabeth were drawn into conversation, and Marietta under Everett's good-humoured glance found himself observed as well as observer.
"You are trying to decipher us?" said Everett, at last, with a smile. "Well, we are not easy."