"So do I. It is a favorite pastime with your sex," said Cecil, beating the hearth-rug impatiently with her little satin shoe.
"I don't think we often attack," laughed Vivian. "We sometimes yield out of amiability, and we sometimes take out the foils in self-defence, though we are no match for those delicate hands that use their Damascus blades so skilfully. We soon learn to cry quarter!"
"To a dozen different conquerors in as many months, then!" cried Cecil, with a defiant toss of her head.
Vivian looked down on her as a Newfoundland might look down on a small and impetuous-minded King Charles, who is hoping to irritate him. Just then three other people staying there came in. A fat old dowager and a thin daughter, who had turquoise eyes, and from whom, being a great pianist, we all fled in mortal terror of a hailstorm of Thalberg and Hertz, and a cousin of Syd's, Cossetting, a young chap, a blondin, with fair curls parted down the centre, whose brains were small, hands like a girl's, and thoughts centred on dew bouquets and his own beauty, but who, having a baronetcy, with much tin, was strongly set upon by the turquoise eyes, but appeared himself to lean more towards the Canadian, as a greater contrast to himself, I suppose.
"How do you do, Cos?" said Vivian, carelessly. The Iron Hand very naturally scorned this effeminate patte de velours.
"You here!" lisped the baronet. "Delighted to see you! thought you'd killed yourself over a fence, or something, before this——"
"Why, Horace," burst in energetic little Blanche, "I have told you for the last month that he was coming down for Christmas."
"Did you, my dear child?" said Cos. "'Pon my life I forgot it. Miss St. Aubyn, my man Cléante (he's the handiest dog—he once belonged to the Duc d'Aumale) has just discovered something quite new—there's no perfume like it; he calls it 'Fleurs des Tilleuls,' and the best of it is, nobody can have it. If you'll allow me——"
"Everybody seems to make it their duty to forget Sydney," muttered Blanche, as the Baronet murmured the rest of his speech inaudibly.
"Never mind, petite; I can bear it," laughed Vivian, leaning against the mantelpiece with that look of quiet strength characteristic of both his mind and body.