“I should never think of having either the one or the other, Rollo.”
“But a great many people do. It was quite the right thing for a time. Come, Aunt Caroline! My uncle is often bored to death with these duty dinners. He will bless you if you have a little music afterwards and set him free.”
“Do you really think so? I can’t understand why you should all talk of being bored. I am never bored,” said Lady Caroline.
“That is your superiority,” said the courtier. “But we poor wretches often are. And I really must hear this voice. You would not like to stand in the way of my interests now when I seem really about to have a chance?”
“It is a very curious thing to me,” said Lady Caroline, stimulated by so much argument to deliver herself of an original remark, “that such a clever young man as you are, Rollo, should require to connect yourself with singers and theatres. Such a thing was never heard of in my time.”
“That is just it,” he said, putting on a mournful look. “If I had not been a clever young man, things would have gone a great deal better with me. There was nothing of that foolish description I am sure, Aunt Caroline, in your time.”
“No,” she said; then added, almost peevishly, “I do not know how to communicate with the girl, Rollo. She is so out of society.”
“But only on the other side of the way,” he said. “Come, write her a note, and I will take it myself, if Jeremie or Joseph are too grand to go.”
“Must I write her a note? I never in my life sent a note to the Lodges,” said Lady Caroline, looking at her hands as if the performance would soil them. Then she added, with a look of relief, “I very often see her when I am out for my drive. You can tell the coachman to stop if he sees her, and I will tell her to come—that will be much the better way.”
“But if she should be engaged?”