He is silent: the apparent indifference of a person whom he believed to be living out her life in solitude, occupied only with his memory, annoys and mortifies him. He has never doubted his own power to write his name indelibly on the hearts of women.
"Perhaps she wishes to marry Brandolin?" suggests Dorothy Usk.
"Pshaw!" says Lord Gervase.
"Why pshaw?" repeats his cousin, persistently. "He would not be a man to my taste, and he hates marriage, and he has a set of Hindoos at St. Hubert's Lea, which would require as much cleaning as the Augean stable; but I dare say she doesn't know anything about them, and he may be persuading her that he thinks marriage opens the doors of Paradise: men can so easily pretend that sort of thing! A great many men have wanted to marry her, I believe, since she came back into the world after her seclusion. George declares that Brandolin is quite serious."
"Preposterous!" replies Lord Gervase.
"Really, I don't see that," replies his judicious cousin. "A great many women have wanted to marry him, though one wonders why. Indeed, I have heard some of them declare that he is wholly irresistible when he chooses."
"With Hindoos, perhaps," says Gervase.
"With our own women," says his cousin. "Lady Mary Jardine died of a broken heart because he wouldn't look at her."
"Pray spare me the roll-call of his victims," says Lord Gervase, irritably: he is passionately jealous of Brandolin. He himself had forgotten Xenia Sabaroff, and forgotten all his obligations to her, when she had been, as he always had believed, within reach of his hand if he stretched it out; but viewed as a woman whom other men wooed and another man might win, she has become to him intensely to be desired and to be disputed. He has been a spoiled child of fortune and of the drawing-rooms all his years, and the slightest opposition is intolerable to him.
"I have no doubt," continues Dorothy Usk, gently, continuing her embroidery of a South Kensington design of lilies and palm-leaves, "that if he were aware you had a prior claim, if he thought or knew that you had ever enjoyed her sympathy, he would immediately withdraw and leave the field: he is a very proud man, with all his carelessness, and would not, I think, care to be second to anybody in the affections of a woman whom he seriously sought."