"You are very much mistaken; all that Beatrice knows of him, I know; that is but little, for Lady Mechlin took her long ago, when her mother died, from such unfit guardianship. Beatrice is as open as the day—"
"Indeed! A little too frank, perhaps?"
"Too frank? That is a paradox. No one can have too much candor. It is not a virtue of your sex, but it is one, thank God! which she possesses in a rare degree, though possibly it gains her enemies where it should gain her friends."
"Still frankness may merge into indiscretion," said Helena, musingly.
"I doubt it. An indiscreet woman is never frank, for she has always the memory of silly things said and done which require concealment."
"I was merely thinking," Helena went on, regardless of a speech which she did not perhaps relish, pour cause, "merely from my deep interest in you, and my knowledge of all you will wish your wife to be, that perhaps Beatrice might be, in pure insouciance, a little too careless, a little too candid for so prominent a position as she will occupy. Last night, in passing a little anteroom in the Redoute, I saw her in such extremely earnest conversation with a man, a handsome man, about your height and age, and—"
The anteroom! Earlscourt thought, with a pang, of the start she had given when he entered it the previous night. But he was not of a jealous temperament, nor a curious one; his mind was too constantly occupied with great projects and ambitions to be capable of joining petty things together into an elaborate mosaic; he had no petitesses himself, and trifles passed unheeded. He interrupted her decidedly:
"What is there in that to build a pyramid of censure from? Doubtless it was one of her acquaintances—probably one of mine also. I should have thought you knew me better, Helena, than to attempt this gossiping nonsense with me."
"O, I say no more. I only thought you, of all men, would wish Cæsar's wife to be above—"
The gnat-strings had been too insignificant to rouse him before, but at this one his eyebrows contracted, and he rose.