"Will Miss Valletort leave you soon?" asked Cardonnel, sitting down by her.
"Ah! monsieur, vous êtes là!" thought Lady Marabout, as she answered, like a guarded diplomatist as she was, that it was not all settled at present what her niece's post-season destiny would be, whether Devon or Fernditton, or the Spas, with her mother, Lady Honiton; and then unfurled her fan again, and chatted about Baden and her own indecision as to whether she should go there this September.
"May I ask you a question, and will you pardon me for its plainness?" asked Cardonnel, when she'd exhausted Baden's desirable and non-desirable points.
Lady Marabout shuddered as she bent her head, and thought, "The creature is never going to confide in me! He will win me over if he do, he looks so like his mother! And what shall I say to Adeliza!"
"Is your niece engaged to Goodwood or not?"
If ever a little fib was tempting to any lady, from Eve downward, it was tempting to Lady Marabout now! A falsehood would settle everything, send Cardonnel off the field, and clear all possibility of losing the "best match of the season." Besides, if not engaged to Goodwood actually to-night, Val would be, if she liked, to-morrow, or the next day, or before the week was over at the furthest—would it be such a falsehood after all? She colored, she fidgeted her fan, she longed for the little fib!—how terribly tempting it looked! But Lady Marabout is a bad hand at prevarication, and she hates a lie, and she answered bravely, with a regretful twinge, "Engaged? No; not——"
"Not yet! Thank God!"
Lady Marabout stared at him and at the words muttered under his moustaches:
"Really, Major Cardonnel, I do not see why you——"
"Should thank Heaven for it? Yet I do—it is a reprieve. Lady Marabout, you and my mother were close friends; will you listen to me for a second, while we are not overheard? That I have loved your niece—had the madness to love her, if you will—you cannot but have seen; that she has given me some reasonable encouragement it is no coxcombry to say, though I have known from the first what a powerful rival I had against me; but that Valencia loves me and does not love him, I believe—nay, I know. I have said nothing decided to her; when all hangs on a single die we shrink from hazarding the throw. But I must know my fate to-night. If she come to you—as girls will, I believe, sometimes—for countenance and counsel, will you stand my friend?—will you, for the sake of my friendship with your son, your friendship with my mother, support my cause, and uphold what I believe Valencia's heart will say in my favor?"