"Perhaps you can guess, my dear, what he said?"
"I am no clairvoyante, aunt;" and Miss Val yawned a little, and held out one of her long slender feet to admire it.
"Every woman, my love, becomes half a clairvoyante when she is in love," said Lady Marabout, a little bit impatiently; she hadn't been brought up on the best systems herself, and though she admired the refrigeration (on principle), it irritated her just a little now and then. "Did he—did he say anything to you to-night?"
"Oh yes!"
"And what did you answer him, my love?"
"What would you advise me?"
Lady Marabout sighed, coughed, played nervously with the tassels of her peignoir, crumpled Bijou's ears with a reckless disregard to that priceless pet's feelings, and wished herself at the bottom of the Serpentine. Cardonnel had trusted her, she couldn't desert him; poor dear Adeliza had trusted her, she couldn't betray her; what was right to one would be wrong to the other, and to reconcile her divided duties was a Danaid's labor. For months she had worried her life out lest her advice should be asked, and now the climax was come, and asked it was.
"What a horrible position!" thought Lady Marabout.
She waited and hesitated till the pendule had ticked off sixty seconds, then she summoned her courage and spoke:
"My dear, advice in such matters is often very harmful, and always very useless; plenty of people have asked my counsel, but I never knew any of them take it unless it chanced to chime in with their fancy. A woman's best adviser is her own heart, specially on such a subject as this. But before I give my opinion, may I ask if you have accepted him?"