"Did you know that people say they used to carry on together?" he asks, without preamble.
"Who?" asks the lady of Surrenden, sharply.
"Madame Sabaroff and Gervase," he growls. "It'd be odd if they hadn't, as they've come to this house!"
"Of course I knew they were friends; but there was never anything between them in the vulgar sense which you would imply renders them eligible for my house," replies Dorothy Usk, with the severity of a woman whose conscience is clear, and the tranquillity of a woman who is telling a falsehood.
Usk stares at her. "Well, if you knew it, you rode a dark horse, then, when you asked her here?"
"Your expressions are incoherent," returns his wife. "If I wished two people to meet when both were free, who had had a certain sympathy for each other when honor kept them apart, there is nothing very culpable in it? What is your objection?"
"Oh, Lord, I've no objection: I don't care a straw," says her lord, with a very moody expression. "But Brandolin will, I suspect: she's certainly encouraged him. I think you might have shown us your cards."
"Lord Brandolin is certainly old enough to take care of himself in affairs of the heart, and experienced enough, too, if one is to believe all one hears," replies his wife. "What can he care, either, for a person he has known a few days? Whereas the attachment of Gervase to her is of very long date and most romantic origin. He has loved her hopelessly for eight years."
Usk gives a grim guffaw. "The constancy has had many interludes, I suspect! Now I see why you took such a craze for the lady; but you might have said what you were after to me, at any rate. I could have hinted to Brandolin how the land lay, and he wouldn't have walked with his eyes shut into her net."
"Her 'net'? She is as cold as ice to him!" replies his wife, with disgust; "and, were she otherwise, the loves of your friend are soon consoled. He writes a letter, takes a voyage, and throws his memories overboard. Alan's temperament is far more serious."