"He must speak definitely to-morrow," thought Lady Marabout. But the larvæ of to-morrow burst into the butterfly of to-day, and to-day passed into the chrysalis of yesterday, and Goodwood was always very nearly caught, and never quite!
"Come up-stairs, Philip; I want to show you a little Paul Potter I bought the other day," said Lady Marabout one morning, returning from a shopping expedition to Regent Street, meeting her son at her own door just descending from his tilbury. "Lord Goodwood calling, did you say, Soames? Oh, very well."
And Lady Marabout floated up the staircase, but signed to her footman to open the door, not of the drawing-room, but of her own boudoir.
"The Potter is in my own room, Philip; you must come in here if you wish to see it," said that adroit lady, for the benefit of Soames. But when the door was shut, Lady Marabout lowered her voice confidentially: "The Potter isn't here, dear; I had it hung in the little cabinet through the drawing-rooms, but I don't wish to go up there for a few moments—you understand."
Carruthers threw himself in a chair, and laughed till the dogs Bijou, Bonbon, and Pandore all barked in a furious concert.
"I understand! So Goody's positively coming to the point up there, is he?"
"No doubt he is," said Lady Marabout, reprovingly. "Why else should he come in when I was not at home? There is nothing extraordinary in it. The only thing I have wondered at is his having delayed so long."
"If a man had to hang himself, would you wonder he put off pulling the bolt?"
"I don't see any point in your jests at all!" returned Lady Marabout. "There is nothing ridiculous in winning such a girl as Valencia."
"No; but the question here is not of winning her, but of buying her. The price is a little high—a ducal coronet and splendid settlements, a wedding-ring and bondage for life; but he will buy her, nevertheless. Cardonnel couldn't pay the first half of the price, and so he was swept out of the auction-room. You are shocked, mother! Ah, truth is shocking sometimes, and always maladroit; one oughtn't to bring it into ladies' boudoirs."